‘She’s no cause to.’ Merlin’s mouth was dry for a few moments. ‘We saw it happen, from the swallowship. Saw the Husker weapons strike Plenitude – saw the fall of the Palace of Eternal Dusk.’ Merlin turned from the tableau of his mother. ‘I mean to go back, one of these days – see what’s left with my own eyes. But I find it hard to bring myself to.’
‘How many died?’ Teal asked.
‘Hundreds of millions. We were the only two that Quail managed to save, along with a few fragments of cultural knowledge. So I know what it’s like, Teal – believe me I know what it’s like.’ He turned from her with a cold disregard. ‘Ship, bring Teal out.’
‘What about you?’
‘I need a little time on my own. You can start remembering everything I need to know about the binary system. You’ve got about five hours.’
Tyrant pulled Teal out of the Palace. Merlin stood alone, silent, for long moments. Then he returned to the parlour where his mother watched the window, imprisoned in an endless golden day, and he stood in her shadow wondering what it would take to free her from that reverie of loss and loneliness.
They made a safe emergence from the Waynet, Merlin holding his breath until they were out and stable and the syrinx had stopped ringing in its cradle like a badly-cracked bell.
He took a few minutes to assess their surroundings.
Two stars, close enough together for fusion ships to make a crossing between them in weeks. A dozen large worlds, scattered evenly between the two stars. Hundreds of moons and minor bodies. Thousands of moving ships, easily tracked across interplanetary distance, the vessels grouped into squadrons and attack formations. Battle stations and super-carriers. Fortresses and cordons. The occasional flash of a nuclear weapon or energy pulse weapon – battle ongoing.
Tyrant was stealthy, but even a stealthy ship made a big splash coming out of the Waynet. Merlin wasn’t at all surprised when a large vessel locked onto them and closed in fast, presumably pushing its fusion engines to the limit.
Teal carried on briefing him as the ship approached.
‘I don’t like the look of that thing,’ Tyrant said, as soon as they had a clear view.
‘I don’t either,’ Merlin said. ‘We’ll treat it respectfully. Wouldn’t want you getting a scratch on your paintwork, would we?’
The vessel was three times as large as Merlin’s ship and every inch a thing of war. Guns bristled from its hull. It was made of old alloys, forged and joined by venerable methods, and its engines and weapons depended on the antique alchemy of magnetically bottled fusion. A snarling mouth that had been painted across the front of the ship, crammed with razor-tipped teeth.
‘It’s a Havergal ship,’ Teal said. ‘That’s their marking, that dagger-and-star. It doesn’t look all that different to the ships they had when we were here before.’
‘Fusion’s a plateau technology,’ Merlin remarked. ‘If all they ever needed to do was get around this binary system and blow each other up now and then, it would have been sufficient.’
‘They knew about the Waynet, of course – hard to miss it, cutting through their sky the way it does. That interested them. They wanted to jump all the way from fusion to syrinx technology, without all the hard stuff in between.’
‘Doesn’t look like they got very far, does it?’
The angry-looking ship drew alongside. An airlock opened and a squad of armoured figures came out on rocket packs. Merlin remained tense, but commanded Tyrant’s weapons to remain inside their hatches. He also told the proctors to hide themselves away until he needed them.
Footfalls clanged onto the hull. Grappling devices slid like nails on rust. Merlin opened his airlock, nodded at Teal, and the two of them went to meet the boarding party. He was half way there when a thought occurred to him. ‘Unless they bring up your earlier visit, don’t mention it. You’re just along for the ride with me. I want to know if there’s anything they say or do that doesn’t fit with your picture of them – anything they might be keeping from me.’
‘I speak their language. Isn’t that going to take some explaining?’
‘Feign ignorance to start with, then make it seem as if you’re picking it up as you go. If they get suspicious, we’ll just say that there are a dozen other systems in this sector where they speak a similar dialect.’ He flashed a nervous smile at Teal. ‘Or something. Make it up. Be creative.’
The airlock had cycled by the time they arrived. When it opened, Merlin was not surprised to find only two members of the boarding party inside. There would not have been room for more.
‘Welcome,’ he said, making a flourishing gesture of invitation. ‘Come in, come in. Take your shoes off. Make yourselves at home.’
They were a formidable looking pair. Their vacuum armour had a martial look to it, with bladed edges and spurs, a kind of stabbing ram on the crowns of their helmets, fierce-looking grills across the glass of their faceplates. All manner of guns and close-combat weapons buckled or braced to the armour. The armour was green, with gold ornamentation.
Merlin tapped his throat. ‘Take your helmets off. The worst you’ll catch is a sniffle.’
They came into the ship. Their faces were lost behind the grills, but he caught the movement as they twisted to look at each other, before reaching up to undo their helmets. They came free with a tremendous huff of equalising pressure, revealing a pair of heads. There were two men, both bald, with multiple blemishes and battle-scars across their scalps. They had tough, grizzled-looking features, with lantern jaws and a dusting of dark stubble across their chins and cheeks. A duelling scar or similar across the face of one man, a laser burn ruining the ear of the other. Their small, cold-seeming eyes were pushed back into a sea of wrinkles. One man opened his mouth, revealing a cage of yellow and metal teeth.
He barked out something, barely a syllable. His voice was very deep, and Merlin caught a blast of stale breath as he spoke. The other man waited a moment then amplified this demand or greeting with a few more syllables of his own.
Merlin returned these statements with an uneasy smile of his own. ‘I’m Merlin,’ he said. ‘And I come in peace. Ish.’
‘They don’t understand you,’ Teal whispered.
‘I’m damned glad they don’t. Did you get anything of what they said?’
‘They want to know why you’re here and what you want.’
The first man said a few more words, still in the same angry, forceful tone as before. The second man glanced around and touched one of the control panels next to the airlock.
‘Isn’t war lovely,’ Merlin said.
‘I understand them,’ Teal said, still in a whisper. ‘Well enough, anyway. They’re still using the main Havergal language. It’s shifted a bit, but I can still get the gist. How much do you want me to pretend to understand?’
‘Nothing yet. Keep soaking it in. When you think you’ve given it long enough, point to the two of us and make the sound for “friend”.’ Merlin grinned back at the suited men, the two of them edging away from the lock in opposite directions. ‘I know; it needs a little work, doesn’t it? Tired décor. I’m thinking of knocking out this wall, maybe putting a window in over there?’
Teal said something, jabbing one hand at her chest and another at Merlin. ‘Friendly,’ she said. ‘I’ve told them we’re friendly. What else?’
‘Give them our names. Then tell them we’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge of that planet you mentioned.’
He caught “Merlin” and “Teal” and the name “Havergal”. He had to trust that she was doing a good job of making her initial efforts seem plausibly imperfect, even as she stumbled into ever-improving fluency. Whatever she had said, though, it had a sudden and visible effect. The crag-faced men came closer together again and now directed their utterances at Teal alone, guessing that was the only one who had any kind of knowledge of their language.