Free Warlock by Glen Cook

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 sensitive to the touch. The trees had to be at least five hundred years old before they could be cut. They were considered very precious. The groves are protected by a web of laws even