Read Online Starpilot's Grave: Book Two of Mageworlds by Debra Doyle, James D. MacDonald - Free Book Online

about it, steadying and strengthening more than he’d expected in the time since he’d last met her. There were other changes, too, chief among them the short, silver-trimmed ebony staff she wore clipped to her belt. The distinctive aura of Magework clung to the staff like purple fire, its patterns clearly visible to Owen’s already-sensitive perceptions.
    Where did she get that thing? he wondered. And how can she touch it without knowing what it is?
    “Owen,” she said. If she noticed his reaction to the staff, she didn’t show it. Ignoring the cot and the rickety chair, she sat down on the floor across from him. “It’s been a while—and this isn’t where I expected to see you again.”
    For a moment Owen was uncertain how he should deal with his unexpected visitor. He watched her, not speaking, while he sorted through the possibilities in his head.
    Does Master Ransome know what she’s carrying? Should I tell him … no. She’s Adept, not apprentice; she has the right to make her own decisions, and she doesn’t feel like a traitor.
    But the staff made him uncomfortable just the same. If the local Mages could sense it, they might do—who knew what they might do? Unless the power it represented in the hands of an Adept made even them nervous.
    It ought to. It makes me nervous.
    “You shouldn’t be here,” he said finally.
    “Maybe you’re right,” Llannat said. “But you might as well be broadcasting yourself over all the holovid networks in Namport. You were certainly giving me headaches as far out as the Medical Station.”
    “You should have taken the hint and stayed away.” He leaned forward a little, catching her gaze and holding it. “Listen to me. You being here is dangerous. For me, for you. Don’t ask why. Just go.”
    She didn’t look surprised. “Not yet,” she said. “I have a question for you first. Guild business.”
    “I doubt if I can answer it for you,” he said. “I’m just an apprentice, remember?”
    Llannat shook her head. “You’re more than that, and every Adept in the Guild knows it. I want you to tell me what’s going on with Ari. Master Ransome sent me here to play bodyguard for him—so why is he being shipped out when I’m not?”
    “I don’t know,” said Owen truthfully. Master Ransome hadn’t mentioned Ari in their discussions back at the Retreat. Even the cautionary note Owen had sent to the Medical Station had been his own idea. He and Ari had never been close—quite the opposite, in fact—but there was always the chance his brother might spot him by accident in the Namport crowd. “The orders probably have something to do with Space Force policy, whatever that is.”
    “That’s what I mean,” she said. “The last time I got any orders, Master Ransome pulled strings or pushed buttons or did whatever it is he does. Next thing I knew, instead of going to Galcen South Polar and treating recruits for snow blindness, I was wading through the water-grain paddies on Nammerin with your brother. This time, though, nobody did any such thing—and I want to know how I’m supposed to be protecting Ari if he’s off on a ship somewhere and I’m stuck down here on the mud flats until further notice.”
    “It could be that Master Ransome has assigned someone else to look after my brother. Or he may not need looking after any more. Who knows?”
    “I think you do. Are you here to guard him?”
    Owen hesitated. The question was coming too close to matters that shouldn’t be spoken of aloud—not to someone who carried a Magelord’s staff on a planet where a Mage-Circle still worked as Circles had in the old days.
    “I think you ought to go now,” he said.
    He saw her drawing herself together, as if gathering her resolve. Then she spoke, quietly and with a touch of reluctance. “I don’t want to do it like this,” she said. “But it’s Ari’s life we’re talking about. I’m an Adept, Owen Rosselin-Metadi, and you’re still an apprentice in the