The New Star: Interlude 16

Thorns, 23rd Ascending Air, RY769. Approximate time: 3.30a.m.

Lieutenant Cathak Delandau tiptoed across the room to the drinks cabinet and poured a large measure of finest Panguan brandy into a glass, which she caused to become cool with a trivial expenditure of her essence.
Trust the general to keep the best selection for his private use, she thought, this is a far better year than what we were served at the feast.
At first she had thought it was that whole “new religion temperance” nonsense, that had been thrust down their throats ever since landing in the Threshold six weeks previously. But the subsequent actions of General V’Neef Yy towards his newest officer had convinced her of the hypocrisy of the whole thing. In public, we are reformed characters. In private, it is the same old story.
Delandau considered this as she savoured the scent of the brandy. She looked through to the adjacent room where the general slept, fitfully. They had all slept fitfully here, at first. This palace took some getting used to. The hospitality of their host could not be faulted, but nothing he could do could disguise the fact that this was no place for the living to… well, live.
“Delandau.”
The unexpected voice startled her back to the here and now. It was a soft, woman’s voice, not one Delandau had heard before; but that seemed strangely familiar to her. It had come from out in the corridor, the door to which was still ajar from her entering. Delandau drank her drink down in one and, glass still in hand, went to see who had called her name. The corridor was deserted.
“Delandau.”
The same voice, from further down the passage. Not a way Delandau had been before, for her own quarters lay in the other direction. But there was no going back now; her curiosity had to be satisfied. At the end of the passage she found… no-one. Whoever it was was playing silly buggers, and was going to catch it hot when Delandau caught up with her.
“Delandau.” A different voice this time; her uncle Arech’s, but again coming from out of her sight, just around the next corner. She should have called out to him, maybe, but she did not. She went towards the voice, as she had done with the others. Her uncle was not waiting for her around the corner.
“Delandau.” Her brother, Shazar, this time. But she knew he was far away, still back at their family home. Whose voice it was no longer mattered, it drew her on regardless.
By the time some sense returned to her, she had been thoroughly lost, deep in the palace of Mask of Winters. She heard someone talking, quietly, in a nearby room. As she approached, cautiously, she recognised it as the voice of the strange Ivory woman that Yy spent so much time with – the one that gave everyone else the creeps. She was talking with a man whose voice she did not know, but when she drew up to the door and peeked through a gap, she deduced from what she had heard and knew of Yy that this was his father, or rather his father’s ghost. The resemblance between them made this unmistakable. She watched for a while, not wanting to interrupt their discussion, waiting for a suitable moment to ask for their assistance. She never got the chance for, standing there unobserved, she was the accidental witness to something so terrible that it broke her mind into a thousand pieces.

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