The Gathering Flame Read Online Free Page B

heard him laugh quietly in the dark.
    “Domina, if I can’t find a ship when it’s in port, I’ll eat my pilot’s license. I’ll get you home safe—it’s the least I can do.” Blaster in hand, he started down the alley in the direction from which the shots and footsteps had come.
    “That way?” she asked, hesitating. “I thought …”
    “So did they, probably.” He paused, then reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a second, smaller blaster. “But in case they didn’t—did that finishing school you were at teach you how to work one of these things?”
    She shook her head. “I’m afraid the curriculum didn’t include a course in heavy artillery. Sorry.”
    Metadi pressed the weapon into her hand anyway. “It’s easy,” he said. His hand was warm over hers. “You hold it here, and when you want to shoot it, you press on this stud here with your thumb. Whatever’s standing in front of the bell goes away.”
    “How about aiming it?”
    “No time to practice that—just don’t point it at me.”
    She hefted the blaster. It had an oddly heavy feel to it for its small size, and she felt inclined to treat it with considerable respect. “Is there a—what do you call it? A safety mechanism?”
    “I’ve already armed it.”
    “You seem to have thought of everything,” she said—and at that moment the back entrance to the Double Moon flew open and a voice shouted, “It’s them! Stop them!”
    “Come on,” Metadi said, and sprinted for the mouth of the alley. Perada gathered up her skirts with her free hand and followed after him. Somewhat to her surprise, nobody shot at them from either direction.
    When they reached the juncture of the alley and the street beyond, she understood why. The man who’d carried her message upstairs to Captain Metadi was standing there waiting for them, leaning on what she thought at first was an Adept’s staff.
    Surely not, she thought, and then saw that the staff was a bar of plain metal, such as anybody might pick up and wield. Three men lay motionless on the pavement nearby, their weapons fallen from their hands.
    “I thought you’d given up that sort of thing,” Metadi said. There was a note in the captain’s voice that Perada couldn’t quite identify, as if he’d touched on something that was an old issue between him and his copilot.
    The other man—Errec Ransome, that was his name—glanced sideways at the bar of metal, and shrugged. “One uses the tools that come to hand. I’ll deep-space it once we leave orbit, if it makes you happier.”
    “Up to you,” Metadi said. “But we’d better go.”
    He started down the street at a brisk pace, threading his way through the press of vehicles and pedestrians. Nobody seemed to notice his blaster, still at the ready in his hand, or perhaps nobody cared. Nor, to Perada’s relief, did anybody seem to notice her: the blue spidersilk gown was a good deal more formal than what passed for the usual female garb in this part of Waycross, but the mud-stained fabric and ripped bodice—and the blaster Metadi had given her—apparently sufficed to camouflage the fact.
    “So what happened?” Ransome said to Metadi. “Get into trouble again?”
    Again? wondered Perada, but Metadi didn’t break stride.
    “Some kind of misunderstanding,” he said, hurrying through the noisy crowd. Ransome matched his pace easily, but Perada—shorter than both of them and hampered by the long skirt of her gown—had to half-run to keep up. “What about you? Find out anything?”
    “Quite a bit,” Ransome said, followed by something in the unfamiliar language he and the captain had spoken together earlier. Perada wondered if it was the copilot’s birth-tongue that he and Metadi used for privacy’s sake, or the captain’s.
    Another cry of “There they are! Over that way!” made itself heard above the noise of the crowd. Metadi looked in the direction of the shout.
    “Uh-oh,” he said, picking up his pace. “Security