Warlock by Andre Norton

He scrutinized Ziantha coldly, as if she were not a person but a tool—or weapon—and he were judging her effectiveness. In Yasa, Ziantha detected no sign of unease, though the upper grades of the Guild were perilous to those who aspired to gain them. Advancement went largely by assassination. An “erase” could be ordered for any veep who was either considered “unsafe,” or who stood in the path of some ambitious underling.

When a check was run by one of the coordinators, there was always a question of trouble. But if Yasa had any reservations concerning this visit, no human would be able to read that from her, any more than a detect could ensnare her thoughts when she wished to retire behind her own alien “cover.” Now she watched Ziantha with a lazy, unblinking stare, but on her knee sat Harath, his eyes closed as if he were asleep. Ziantha, seeing him, was instantly warned. She had been long enough in this household to mark any deviation from the routine as a battle signal and to take up her part of the defense.

Yasa was not as easy as she seemed, or Harath would not be playing the pet role. He had been ordered to pick up any leakage from the visitor’s mind-lock. Which meant that Yasa would give no information to this coordinator, and Ziantha must be very careful what she herself said. Since the artifact was the main concern at present, that, above all, must be secret.

She had only a moment or two to grasp this, to prepare a defense, when Yasa waved a hand in her direction.

“This is the sensitive who gathered the tape readings, Mackry. You asked to see her; she is here.”

He was a large man, once well-muscled and imposing-looking, now a little jowly, a little too paunchy. The spacer’s uniform he wore, with a captain’s wings, fit a little too tight. Either it had not been tailored for him, or he had put it aside for some time and now found it irksome. On his chin was a small beard, smoothed and stiffened to curl out in an imperious point. But the rest of his face was smooth, dark red in color; his head was shaved bare and then overlaid with a filigree of silver in swirls, as one might wear a very tight cap.

His eyes were deeply sunken, or perhaps it was the puffiness of his cheeks which made them appear so, and his brows had been treated to stand out in points to match his beard. Those eyes, for all their retreat behind flesh and hair, were very hard and bright, reminding Ziantha unwillingly of the glitter of that thread which nested the seeing gem, a memory she hastily buried.

He grunted, perhaps an acknowledgment to Yasa’s half introduction. Then he launched into a sharp questioning of Ziantha concerning her visit to Jucundus’s apartment, though he, of course, did not inquire what had been on the tapes, since Ogan had erased that. He took her step by step through the whole foray from the moment the palm lock on the door had yielded, to the end of her journey on her return to the villa. Having Yasa’s unspoken warning, the girl omitted all reference to the artifact and the subsequent apporting of it.

When she had finished, and there had not been the slightest change in Yasa’s expression to signal either that she was correctly following subtle directions, or making perhaps a totally irredeemable mistake, Mackry grunted again. Yasa uncurled from her usual lounging position.

“You see. Ogan checked with every scanner. It is exactly as we reported, gentle homo. There was no possible hint of detection.”

“So it would seem. But the city is hot, blazing hot, I tell you! In some way that heat is tied to Jucundus. But that has-been had not made a single move to suggest that he knows his microrecords were scanned. They have a sensitive out, sniffing hard. You have kept this one”—again he regarded Ziantha, to her rising irritation, with a look that relegated her to the status of tool—”under wraps?”

“You can ask.” Yasa yawned daintily. “She is here, and has been here. Our detection devices have not traced any mind-scan as a probe. With Ogan’s lab here do you think such would go undetected?”

“Ogan!” He made that name into a snort, as if he classed the parapsychologist with Ziantha. “Well, you cannot keep her here—not now. So far our plans concerning Jucundus are going well; we want no interference. Get her off-world at once!”

Yasa yawned again. “It is near time for my leave. And I have an excellent excuse to go and visit the Romstk trading post. She shall go with my household.”

“Agreed. You shall be told when to return.” With no further word he stalked from the room, his rudeness deliberate, Ziantha knew. Her guess was confirmed when she looked at Yasa.

The feline contoured face of the Salarika was expressionless as far as the human eye could tell, except that the alien’s lips were drawn very tight against her teeth, showing the sharp white points of what in her ancestors had been tearing, death-dealing fangs.

“Mackry,” Yasa observed in a thoughtful tone, her voice almost as emotionless as she could make her features, “takes his missions with a seriousness that suggests he sees before him a flight of stairs climbing to heights. Oftentimes when one’s attention is fixed too far ahead and at the wrong angle, one can trip over a crevice before one’s very feet. But in so much does he serve our purpose—we needed a reason to take off from Korwar without question from those using Mackry—though he does not reckon the truth that he is my servant here, rather than master.”

“You have learned something?” Ziantha asked.

Yasa purred. “Naturally, cubling. When Yasa tells eyes to see, ears to listen, noses to sniff, they obey. We know the general direction from which came Jucundus’s toy. Now we go in search of those who make it their mission in life to learn what is unknown or long forgotten. We go to Waystar.”

Waystar! Ziantha had heard of it all her short life. It was considered a legend by most of the star rovers, but it existed, as all the Guild knew well, though perhaps only a handful of a handful among them even guessed in what part of the galaxy it was located. It served the Guild in some respects, but it was not a possession of the veeps of the underworld as were some other secret bases.

Long before the Guild came into power, before the first of the Terrans felt their way along unmapped stellar roads, Waystar had been. It was a port of outlaws, a rendezvous for space pirates when piracy existed. Now it was a meeting place for Jacks, those outlaws who raided sparsely settled planets and installations, and for the Guildmen, who bought the loot from such raids, or hired Jacks at times to carry out some ship plan of their own.

According to the stories, it had once been a space station located in a system now so old its planets were cinders in orbit around an almost dead red dwarf sun. If it were as old as the worlds it companied, or even as old as the life that had once ruled them, it was beyond any reckoning of age by those who now used it. It had, however, in recorded time, such a dark history as to overshadow all speculation. Going to Waystar was like saying one planned to venture into the bowels of Ruhkarv, with perhaps as good a reason to expect the worst thereafter.

“This Mackry—if we go to Waystar—” Ziantha ventured. Though the Guild did not rule there, their influence would weigh deeply enough so Yasa might be found to be playing traitor. What would happen then? When a veep fell, his or her personal following were also swept away, unless they were extraordinarily fortunate or had secret ties with the one or ones who brought about that downfall.

Yasa smoothed Harath’s downy head, uttered a sound amazingly like the snapping of the creature’s beak.

“Mackry is one who runs hither and thither with messages, is that not so, my soft one?” she asked Harath aloud.

His mind-send was clear. “He tries to find something with which he can cause trouble for you. So far his search has brought nothing. He believes his detect shields him.” There was such a strong note of scorn in that beaming that Ziantha was startled into a question of her own.

“It does not?”

Harath turned his head to look directly at her. Though that seemed an impossible angle for flesh and bone to endure, he held so, his huge eyes unblinking. “Harath can read.” Again he beak-clicked scornfully.

Ziantha had not realized that the alien could penetrate the mind-seals worn as a matter of course by Guild men. She was so inured to the marvels of their techs that she accepted as a fact that such a shield could not be pierced by normal means. But then, of course, Harath was not “normal” by her species’ standards at all.