Free Book 2 - Warlock by Glen Cook

settlers into the Ponath.
We are simply validating our claim to our provinces. In blood.
Gradwohl is leading us in a fight against the Serke, and this is
the only way we can battle them. Indirectly.”
    “Why are the Serke so determined, then? I am told wealth
is the reason. I know about the emeralds, and there is gold and
silver and copper and things, but nobody ever did any mining up
there. It is a Tech Two Zone. There must be some other reason the
Serke risk conflict.”
    “Probably. We do not know what it is, though. We just know
we cannot allow them to steal the Ponath. Them or the
brethren.”
    “You think the reason the tradermales will not help us is
because they want to steal the Ponath, too?”
    “I expect the Brown Paw Bond would stand with us if they
could. We have been close associates for centuries. But higher
authority may have been offered a better cut by the
Serke.”
    “Could we not impose sanctions?”
    Dorteka appeared amused by her naiveté. “Without proof?
Wait. Yes. You know, and I know, and everyone else alive knows what
is happening. Or we think we do. We
suspect
that the
brethren and the Serke Community have entered into a conspiracy
prohibited by the conventions. But no Community extant will act on
suspicion. The Serke have Bestrei, and flaunt it. As long as the
Reugge cannot present absolute and irrefutable proof of what is
happening, no other Community faces the disagreeable business of
having to take sides. They would rather sit back and be entertained
by our travails.”
    “But if the Serke get away with this, they will be a
threat to everyone else. Do the other orders not see that? Armed
with all our wealth, and Bestrei
besides . . . ”
    “Who knows what is really going on? Not you or I. The
other sisterhoods may be in it with the Serke. There are ample
precedents.”
    “It all seems silly to me,” Marika said. “Will
Grauel and Barlog be able to go with me?”
    “I am sure they will. You are a single unit in most
eyes.”
    Marika glanced at her instructress, not liking her tone. She and
Dorteka tolerated one another because the most senior insisted, but
there was no love between them.
     
    Marika, Grauel, Barlog, and Dorteka, with their gear, boarded a
northbound darkship about the time Marika should have begun her
mathematics class. The bath, before going to their places at the
tips of the short arms, made certain the passengers strapped
themselves to the darkship’s frame. All gear went into bins
fixed around the cross’s axis.
    Marika paid much more attention to the darkship and its
operators this trip. “Mistress Dorteka. What is this metal? I
have seen nothing like it before.” It seemed almost invisible
when probed with the touch.
    “Titanium. It is the lightest metal known, yet very
strong. It is difficult to obtain. The brethren recover it in a
process similar to that they use to obtain aluminum. They fairly
rob us for these ships.”
    “They make them?
    “Yes.”
    “I would think it something we would do for ourselves. Why
do we let them rob us?”
    “I am not sure. Maybe because to argue is too much
trouble. We do buy them, I think, because their ships are better.
We have been buying them for only about sixty years, though. Before
that most of the orders made their own. There was a lot of artistry
involved. Most of those old darkships are still in service down
south, too, around TelleRai and the other big cities.”
    “What were they like? How were they different? And what do
you mean, buy? I thought the tradermales only leased.”
    “Questions, questions, questions.
Pup . . . They do not lease darkships. We
would not let them get away with that. In some ways they have us
too much in their power now.
    “The old ships are not much different from those you have
seen. Maybe smaller, generally. They were wooden, though. A few
were pretty fanciful because they were seen as works of art. They
were pawcrafted from golden fleet timber, a wood that is