Magus Star Rising

Coincidences are Vanera’s way of maintaining

a balance in all things.

UNKNOWN

Met Again

Compared to the first time he shadowed Marcus Honin-Zay, Weller’s follow-up had been pretty boring. Nothing unusual had occurred, no one had attacked him, no mysterious savior appeared. After a couple of hours, during which Weller consumed more vrete pastries and coffee, Honin-Zay left his mistress’ apartment above the book store, and returned home. His personal ground-car picked him up at the dolmen-entrance where he had arrived.

Weller hadn’t detected the Senitte he thought tailing him again. But then, he reasoned, that was probably nothing but his imagination. Probably.

Several messages awaited Weller on his comm queue when he returned to his own home. He placed his backpack by the door and doffed his shade-hat. Slipping out of his shoes, he poured himself a whiskey and sat down at his desk. He took a sip and pressed the replay stud.

The first message was from his afternoon slag, whose name he couldn’t even remember. “Hey, starbaby,” she crooned. “I’m bein’ sorry about yester-sun. You thinkin’ you can forgive me? Call me, hon.”

Yeah, Weller thought. Sorry about losing a regular customer and all that credit. Delete.

A dissatisfied client queued next, threatening to take him to court. Good luck with that. A lawsuit would be less likely than getting any satisfaction out of the New Terran Embassy, which is probably where the client went to complain first. Buyer beware, as the old expression went. Delete.

“Hey, Weller, man. I heard you was in the Yharria? You back in action? Let’s get together. Just like in the old days, huh? Comm me!” Weller shook his head. News traveled fast. Jackie Sokowski, another Terran expatriate. He hadn’t thought of him in a long time. They had gotten into some trouble a couple of years ago, drinking and whoring. Weller had pretty much gone off the deep end after Selina died. Jackie latched onto him and, in his despair, Weller let him. Delete.

One or two routine messages queued. Overdue bill notices, requests for computer system buys and/or installations. He’d save those.

But the last message in the queue definitely got his attention. He listened to it with a mixture of disbelief and irritation.

“Master Simon Weller?” a soft, female voice intoned in slightly accented Terran. “Bright Star to you. I am Behoola Chaut, Head Servant of Marcus and Claudia Honin-Zay. My master is in need of your services regarding his computer system. Would you be available to visit the Honin-Zay estate today?”

Jesus! What stroking timing! How do I handle this? He leaned back in the chair, staring at the comm. What kind of dumbass joke was this? He’d be taking a risk going to the Honin-Zay house, given the assignment he worked on for its mistress. He could make up an excuse for not going, other business matters, being sick.

On the other hand, the visit would be for a legitimate, innocent-enough reason. He had been to the Honin-Zay estate before on family business. Besides, no one had really seen him following the merchant. He had been very careful to be as inconspicuous as possible in the Yharria today. His one meeting with Claudia Honin-Zay had not been recorded by camera-eyes, and the only servant and/or guard working that day at the Honin-Zay estate had been Kazrah. According to the merchant’s wife, all the rest of the staff had been given some time off to attend to matters concerning the Magus Star festival.

In fact, he reasoned, it might seem odd if he didn’t go. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Tentatively, he punched in the number for the Honin-Zay comm-line.

After a couple of beeps, a woman answered. It sounded like the same one who had left the message, Behoola. “Greetings and Bright Star. Honin-Zay estate,” she said twice, in both Senitte and Terran.

Weller nodded. Smooth and professional and bilingual. Interesting. “Bright Star, gentle fem. This is Simon Weller.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you for calling back, Master Weller.” Not a particularly distinctive voice, one normal enough for a Senitte with only a fraction of an accent. Yet... Weller frowned. An alarm sounded in his brain. There was something familiar about the woman’s voice. And then, whatever triggered that semi-recognition vanished just as quickly.

Only after arrangements were made for his visit and the conversation ended, did it hit him.

It was her. The woman he had encountered in the garment district who looked so much like Selina was this Behoola, the Honin-Zay’s Head Servant.

He downed his whiskey. In the past, he had always dealt with a second or third-status second when doing maintenance on Honin-Zay’s computer system, never the master himself except during the initial sale. He didn’t think this time would be any different but would he be dealing with Behoola? I was planning on trying to find her anyway, he rationalized. Now, it looks like I have.

Interesting house. I wonder what it would be like to live there?

Weller stood across the four-lane boulevard from the Honin-Zay estate, casually studying the dwelling’s nouveau-Senitte architecture. Once again, post-Contact influences held sway in the overall design of the house and its grounds. The sprawling mansion, though not huge by some standards, branched outward in rambling, almost unplanned style. Weller was sure if seen from above, the structure would look like some type of many-limbed organism with its off-shooting branches and additions. The privacy wall obscured some of the landscaping although, Weller remembered from his previous visits that large, lush gardens dominated the rear of the estate. A grove of some type of Terran trees jutted upward on one side of the house. The topmost part of a fountain’s spray could be observed on the other side.

He had changed his clothes to his usual working garb--linen sport jacket over black T-shirt, white pants edging the tops of his tan soft-soled shoes. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, a little nervous at the prospect of possibly seeing Behoola again.

It had been a couple of minutes’ walk from where he’d parked his rental. That had helped use up some of his nervous energy. Here he was again, for the second time today, third counting his drive-by earlier when he thought Behoola was Selina. Ordinarily that would seem unusual, even funny.

But Weller wasn’t laughing. And he wasn’t really all that interested in architecture. He stood puzzling over the fact he was here again at all.

Weller looked away from the Honin-Zay house and wondered again why Claudia Honin-Zay felt it necessary to have him follow her husband. She’s a different one, he thought, remembering the long graceful figure, the intelligent eyes, and strong personality. His mind’s eye lingered on that image. More than just different, he reasoned. Something still nagged at him about this whole affair. I just don’t get it. What’s her agenda? Is it just to satisfy her curiosity or does she need to get something over on her husband? If so, how would she use that knowledge? Considering the rigidity of Senitte society, why would that be a power she could wield over him?

But, suspicions and common sense aside, finding Arshelle had given him a reason for seeing this through now. To hell with everything else.

But not quite yet, it seemed. Perhaps it was his encounter with the thugs in the Yharria or his usual cautious nature but a prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck caused Weller to turn around.

Laid out behind him across from the Honin-Zay estate was what the Senittes referred to as a grenia. Not a park in the strictest sense, the closest in Terran comparisons Weller had found was ‘greenway’, a wild yet accessible natural area incorporating large tracts of forest, meadow, and flowering grassland. The architect for this upscale neighborhood had incorporated the square-mile grenia as a divider between that portion of the Honin-Zay’s side of the boulevard and the beginning of the outskirts of Frenati City.

A high, barred fence, decorated with various filigreed flora and fauna, surrounded the grenia. A woman stood beyond the gate on the main pathway that wound its way through the miniature wilderness. From this distance, Weller couldn’t see many details, only that she was a Senitte, wore a long, generic-type of hooded robe, and seemed to be looking directly at him.

Something about the light reflecting off her eyes, the way she stood...

Selina, Weller thought, knowing how irrational that sounded, even to himself. It’s Selina. He moved to unbar the gate, almost as if his body was directed by someone else. As he entered the grenia, his lungs suddenly filling with the scents of honey blossoms and wild noga weed. The woman moved into an adjoining field of tall grasses. Weller could see the top of her hooded head bobbing through the lush fronds like a coona fish through water. He started to jog after her, some unreasoning compulsion urging him on.

He turned onto the small dirt path the woman had taken. The grasses, like the shimmering walls of a natural, open-air corridor, loomed upward on either side to more than shoulder-height. The woman walked briskly several yards in front of him. She turned then and looked back. A smile crossed her face revealing small, pinkish teeth. Her eyes focused on Weller almost as if she dared him to catch up with her.

“Selina!” Weller cried, seeing the familiar features of the woman he once knew. It was her. How? A flock of birds, startled at his cry, flew upward from the grasses’ interior where they had been roosting, their noisy flight startling him in turn.

He stopped for a moment, catching his breath in surprise, then began running again. The woman had turned into an adjacent pathway, once again lost from his sight. As he, too, took that path, he saw her, up ahead, head down and walking erratically as if she had just stumbled. Weller caught up with her, grabbed her arm just as she looked like she was going to fall and turned her around.

A Seraen fem, black face, spotted with yellow, looked at him in alarm. Weller’s mouth dropped. The Seraen pulled away from him, obviously frightened and perhaps disoriented.

Weller looked around wildly. “I... I’m sorry,” he said, holding his open hands up in front of him. “I... I thought you were someone else.” He backed away, the woman staring at him with wide eyes, then turned and walked quickly back the way he had come.

Once more at the grenia’s main gate, he leaned against the fence, breathing heavily. Too tired, he reasoned. The stims are getting to me. I’ve got to get some rest tonight. By the Third God, that was strange!

As he opened the gate, he looked back once more behind him. The grasses swayed in the wind. In the distance, he could see the beginnings of the native treeline.

Focusing, he crossed the boulevard and identified himself to the guard at the Honin-Zay’s gated causeway. A Senitte fem, one of the servants, had been speaking to the guard through the gate. After the guard let Weller onto the grounds, the woman bowed to him, flashing a smile.

“Bright Sun to you, gentle sir. I am Ladora. Please follow me.”

The fem escorted him up the tiled causeway toward the house. Weller breathed a silent sigh of relief. The last time he had been here it had been Kazrah who had performed this duty. Ladora was a definite improvement over the attendant/bodyguard.

Dome plants, those tall Senitte shrubs, lined both sides of the causeway. Their umbrella-like foliage stretched out overhead, covering the space above and giving the appearance of walking through a tunnel. Dappled sunlight peered through gaps in the leaves, marking the way with alternating patches of dark and light. As if by conscious design, those shadowy forms seemed to create a deliberate design themselves on the causeway’s surface. And, above all else, moving like nikabirds in slo-mo, the round, compact camera-eyes recorded every step, every breath, every spoken word.

Weller grimaced. He wished he could disable the camera-eyes. Did he sell this security system to the Honin-Zays? The drone-cams could be so irritating.

A figure stood at the entrance to the house. A female, dressed in the longfrock many of the high-borns’ employees wore. This was a bright blue garment signifying a higher rank among the seconds. No doubt the Head Servant herself. Her hood was up and her hands clasped together in front of her. From this distance she looked more like one of the pseudo-monks who worked in the Mercy hospice than a servant of a rich merchant family.

As he and the servant walked closer, Weller’s breath caught in his throat. His step faltered. As the features of the Head Servant came into view, it was if a phantom from his past stood there waiting for him. Again.

The woman’s eyes, like his, had grown wide with recognition and surprise; her hand rose to her slightly-parted lips. Recovering quickly, she replaced those expressions and that mannerism with the calm, business-like approach of the head of a household. “Thank... thank you, Ladora,” she said, only miscuing a little. “I will escort Master Weller from here.”

“Yes, Behoola,” the servant replied. Ladora bowed in deference to the Head Servant’s position, turned, and walked away. Weller, stunned by the recognition of the woman in front of him, felt tongue-tied. Yet he tried to speak anyway. “Behoola?” he said. “Are you...?”

“Say nothing, I beg you,” Behoola said softly but with an urgency born of the situation. “Come with me.”

Weller had to kick-start his brain as, open-mouthed, he stood watching Behoola quickly dart down a path through the dome shrubs around the side of the house. What was happening here? This had to be more than some lucky, random event.

He finally got his legs to start moving and followed her silently as she led him to the rear of the house. He could feel his pulse pounding in his ear, a churning in the pit of his stomach

They emerged into the gardens. Though he had seen the Honin-Zay gardens before, Weller stifled a gasp at the sight of such natural, though sentient-designed, beauty. He marveled at the floral arrangement, the placement of shrub, tree, grass and sculpture. It was as though he looked at a painting.

Moving unerringly, Behoola led him to a shady area in a corner of the garden acreage. Here a stone bench sat hidden within the vine and rose-entwined confines of an arbor. The wooden sunshade bore the outline of an ancient Senitte Spirit temple, the wood curving and sharpening upward into steeples as sharp, horizontal planes stretched outward like wings.

Behoola didn’t sit but stood nervously, staring at Weller with deep-set, troubled eyes. Surely, my appearance can’t have upset her that much, he thought. Something else is going on.

“There are no guards here, no camera-eyes,” she said. “We can speak freely but not for too long.” She paused, once again casting a fierce glance in his direction. “You are the one who stopped me on Dalma Street.”

Weller nodded, his throat suddenly dry. She looked so much like Selina! They had to be related! “Yes. Again, my apologies. When I saw you last night, I thought you were her.”

“Twist of fate? Was it truly?” She glanced back to the garden. “The Spirits work their magic in different ways. Do you think the two of us meeting now is such a twist?”

So much of Senitte life seemed to revolve around some aspect of their religions. Is that how the world really worked? Before he could frame a suitable, metaphysical reply, she spoke again.

“Arshelle is my sister. My twin.”

I knew it! Weller almost took a step back, her words like a physical blow.

“Did you know my sister? She spoke of a Terran, someone special. No names, no descriptions. Are you that person?”

Weller found his voice but it came out soft and trembling. “Yes. I was involved with Selina... Arshelle two years... cycles ago. I thought she was dead.”

Behoola sighed and collapsed onto the bench as if suddenly depleted of all energy and strength. Her body hunched over like a doll made of rags. “It would be better if she were.”

Weller sat down next to her, his eyes searching. So much like her. The sharp angles of her cheekbones, the nose, small and slightly upturned, the hands, graceful with the veins spider webbing just beneath the skin’s surface. He and Selina had sat just like this on one of the stone dikes at Hombrun Isle, watching the sun set on the Great Sea. Like that magical moment, he wanted to reach out and touch her now.

But this wasn’t Hombrun Isle. And the woman sitting next to him wasn’t Selina.

“Do you know what happened to her?” Behoola’s voice sounded flat and dead, all emotion gone. Once again he moved away, scooting down the bench an inch or two.

“Yes,” he answered reluctantly. Third God forgive me. “Against my advice (my begging, my pleading, my stroking threats!), she underwent a Turning Ritual.”

Behoola let out a sob, covering her face with her hands. “Great Spirits,” she said, her voice breaking. “I feared as much.”

Weller put a hand to his chest, as if he could stop the rapid beating of his heart. “It was my fault. It was all my fault.” Suddenly, the words poured out of him, like a confession. Here he was, sitting with a woman he didn’t even know in a place he could only dream of attaining for himself yet the emotions had been bottled up for so long he couldn’t stop them any longer. “I tried to change her, convince her to get out of the whoring life. I wanted her to marry me.”

Behoola gaped at him, an incredulous look on her face.

Weller shrugged. “I know how crazy it sounds. Me, a Terran with Selina, a Senitte whore. I’m sorry, but that’s what she was.”

“I know.” Her voice sounded resigned, with an almost defeated tone to it. “We had been estranged for a long time. Arshelle left my family’s home when she was very young. She was always rebellious and disobedient. I didn’t know until we found her in that hideous condition that she had become a prostitute. I knew she was still alive. Somewhere. We are twins. There is this... connection.”

“I’m sorry. I...”

“It was not your fault.” Behoola stood again, her back to Weller. Beneath the longfrock, Behoola’s muscles were visibly taut, her body tense. Her voice came out slow and strained. It seemed, she too, had the need to confess. “My father found her, literally on my family’s doorstep, wrapped in blankets, her mind gone. We were never sure who left her there; her sister whores perhaps? Since then, we’ve done what we could do to keep her comfortable. And since my father died, it has been left up to me to provide for her.” She turned, her eyes burning. “Please. Continue.”

Weller hung his head, despair overwhelming him. “I loved her. At least I thought I did. Maybe I just wanted to help her to give my life some kind of meaning. You wouldn’t know to look at me now but I used to be a little more... reputable. So, I tried to convince her.”

“And she took your advice too far?” Behoola asked, her voice rising barely above a whisper.

“Yes! I never intended for that to happen. She decided the only way she could get out of the life she led was to lose everything by Turning. She wanted to get back to another, gentler way of existence. I tried to show her it was all a sham, all a pretense to steal people’s money, but she really believed she could do it. She believed by Turning she would be worthier of my love, that both of us would be able to get out of the city and that type of life, and go live in the mountains or some stroking crazy shit like that.”

Weller stopped, taking a deep breath. He remembered Selina’s face, the excitement glowing from her at the thought of what she wanted to do. “But she did it anyway. She had agreed not to but she did it anyway, against my advice.”

“And something went wrong?” Behoola’s eyes filled with tears.

“Of course.” Weller laughed, a bitter, cruel sound. “Her mind went under. I don’t know if it was the drugs or what. The last time I saw her, they were carrying her out of the Turning Brothel. They told me she had died. And, after looking at her, I thought so too.”

“She’s not dead.”

“I know, I know. I followed you. I went to her room at the hospice.”

“No. That’s not what I mean.” Behoola stared into space, her eyes dull and glassy. “Right after you called, I received another comm message. From one of the hospice workers. No one here knows about Arshelle. I had requested the hospice staff never call me here at the estate except for an emergency. They never have until now.”

Weller suddenly felt cold. He leaned forward expectantly.

“Normally, I would have gone straight to the hospice immediately, but I’ve been given other instructions. And I’m glad now I didn’t; now that I’ve met you. Because of your past relationship with Arshelle, maybe you can help me. Maybe that’s why the Spirits have brought us together here today.”

Weller shrugged off the religious significance Behoola seemed to attach to this moment. “Help you? How? What happened?”

The Head Servant’s next words sent a chill through Weller’s heart. “Arshelle’s gone,” she said, her voice cold. “She’s escaped and, in the process, murdered one of the staff.”