"Doyle, Debra And James D MacDonald - Mageworlds 01 - Price Of The Stars (V1.0)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Debra)

II. DARVELL: NORTHERN HEMISPHERE
III. DARVELL: DARPLEX; ROLNY LODGE
IV. DARVELL: ROLNY LODGE; DARPLEX
V. DARVELL: DOWNTOWN DARPLEX; THE CITADEL
VI. DARVELL: DARPLEX; THE CITADEL
VII. DARVELL: DARPLEX; THE CITADEL THE VOID
VIII. DARVELL: DARPLEX; THE ClTADEL
IX. DARVELL: THE CITADEL; DARVELL NEARSPACE
 
Epilogue

For Meggo and Duncan and John

 
Acknowledgments
 
We couldn’t have done this without the help of a lot of people: Bruce Coville and the Tuesday Evening Literature and Carbohydrate Society; Mary Frances Zambreno; Andrew Sigel and Andrew Phillips and Nancy Hanger; and especially Sherwood Smith, first-reader extraordinaire, without whose enthusiasm we might not have finished the first draft, let alone gone the distance.

Prologue
 
Night had come to Waycross on Innish-Kyl. Night, but not darkness or quiet. Bursts of loud talk and raucous music spilled out through open doorways, and the low thrumming of heavy machinery never stopped. Beka Rosselin-Metadi - tall and thin, with pale yellow hair tied back from a face too sharply planed for prettiness - strode through the crowded spaceport with a starpilot’s fine disregard for the dirtside locals. The locals, in turn, took note of her purposeful air, and of her heavy war-surplus blaster in its worn leather holster, and let her pass.
In fact, Beka had no goal besides a cool drink and a few hours away from the ship. Claw Hard had been in hyperspace for two months on this latest run, plenty of time for Beka to grow tired of both the freighter and her crew. This stop at Waycross was Beka’s first chance to get off-ship since Cashel; the layover at Raffa, the only other port on this run, had been too brief to allow the crew members any liberty.
Osa’s probably afraid he’ll lose the whole lot of us if he lets us out on the town, she decided as she stepped through the door of the Blue Sun Cantina. If her own duties as copilot/navigator hadn’t ended when Claw Hard settled into the docking bay, she wouldn’t be here either - she’d be off-loading and on-loading cargo with the rest of the freighter’s crew. But except for Osa himself she had the only deep-space pilot’s license on board, and Claw Hard’s captain was getting too fat and lazy to do his own ship handling.
Beka smiled thinly to herself. If Osa wants to keep his copilot, she thought, he can damn well let me off the ship for a couple of hours.
The door slid shut behind her, and she made her way through the crowd to the bar. The regulars at the Blue Sun weren’t exactly the sort of people Beka had grown up with. Innish-Kyl was a frontier planet near the Mageworlds border zone, and Waycross had started out as a privateers’ port during the worst years of the late war. Most of the cantina’s patrons probably hadn’t seen a respectable woman more than once or twice in their lives, and wouldn’t know what to say to one if she showed up.
Luckily, Beka’s much-mended coverall and worn leather boots - and the blaster - were enough to spare her the burden of respectability in this crowd. She found a place at the bar and pulled a ten-credit chit out of her pocket.
"Beer," she said in Galcenian. "Whatever you have on tap."
The bartender looked at her without speaking.
Beka sighed. I wonder if it’s my accent. She didn’t suppose the Blue Sun got many customers who spoke the universal tongue of the spacelanes as it sounded on the Mother of Worlds - but even seven years away from Galcen hadn’t been enough to wipe all traces of home from Beka’s voice.
It never fails, she thought with resignation. A few hours without sleep, and I start talking like I’m just out of finishing school. Oh, well. Try again.
"Beer," she said, enunciating clearly. "Tap."
The bartender blinked. "Yes, Domina."
Oh, damn. It wasn’t the accent.
Beka exhaled slowly through clenched teeth. It wasn’t the bartender’s fault that random genetic factors had made her into a taller, thinner, plainer version of the civilized galaxy’s most famous stateswoman. But what anybody could think Mother was doing in a place like this - or maybe they haven’t forgotten that she did come to Waycross once, when she needed the kind of help that no other place could give.
She drew a long breath. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not the Domina. I’m not even a gentle lady. I’m a thirsty starpilot, and I’d like some brew."
The bartender gave her another strange look, then shrugged and turned away. He drew a mug of beer from the console behind the bar and slid the mug across the counter without speaking. Beka reached out to pick it up, but before her fingers reached the frosted glass she felt a touch on her shoulder.
She whirled, dropping her hand to the grip of the blaster. Then she saw who stood there - a slight, dark-haired man in dusty black, a plain wooden staff slung across his back on a leather thong. Her blue eyes widened with recognition, and she let her hand relax.
"Master Ransome," she said. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you," the man answered. "You’re wanted down at the docking bays."
Beka raised an eyebrow. "Somehow I can’t see the Master of the Adepts’ Guild running errands for the likes of Captain Osa."
"I’m not," Ransome said. "Your father is here."
So you’re running errands for Dadda instead… which means Mother has to be mixed up in this somehow. Beka felt the old, familiar anger stir to life at the thought. Seven years. It’s been seven years, and she still thinks I’m going to change my mind and come home. Or maybe Master Ransome is supposed to drag me back to Galcen whether I want to go or not.
She gave the Adept a wary look. "I thought the Space Force stayed away from Innish-Kyl."
"The Space Force has nothing to do with it. Warhammer is in docking bay sixty-two-D."
Beka took a long, deep drink from her mug. So her father had finally brought his old ship back to the port that had made her famous. After all the times I asked him to take me to Waycross, back when I was a kid, and he said no, he didn’t want to see the place again… and now he’s here.
She set down the beer and pushed herself away from the bar. "All right," she said. "I can take a hint. Let’s go."
She followed the Adept through the crowded room and out onto the street. The rest of the Blue Sun’s customers drew aside to let them pass - not out of any regard for her, she knew, but out of well-founded respect for anyone who carried an Adept’s staff.
For centuries the galaxy’s Adepts had kept to themselves, living apart from those who distrusted their power to sense and manipulate the patterns of the universe. Then strange, wing-shaped scoutships began appearing above the outplanets. A few years later the raiding parties followed, first on the frontier and then in the heart of the galaxy itself. And in the opening skirmishes of what became the Magewar, the once-distrusted Adepts became humanity’s chief defenders against the power of the Mageworlds.
Now Beka Rosselin-Metadi glanced over at Master Ransome as they walked through Waycross’s narrow streets. "Mother’s up to something," she said, "and I don’t like it. Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or not?"
Ransome shook his head. "The docking bay isn’t far."