Read Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) for Free Online

the wooden floor came nearer with each passing heartbeat.
    “Yes, Hether, it’s me,” he replied and pushed open the bedroom door. “It’s really something of an emergency—and yes, Aderbury is fine, it’s my emergency. I need a homing lizard.”
    Her surprise at seeing him transformed to curiosity at the abrupt nature of his request. She stammered for a moment, thinking to ask, but seeing in his eyes that haste was in order, she moved immediately to oblige. “Why yes, of course. What’s happened? Why not telepathy?”
    “You mustn’t say anything to anyone. You truly mustn’t. But it’s all gone horribly wrong.” He quickly rattled off a truncated version of what had happened as they made their way to Aderbury’s cluttered study and the small cage where the couple kept their homing lizards. He told her of his capture, the Queen’s outrage, the rescue led by the royal assassin, and his subsequent work with Blue Fire to send the fleet home to Earth. Altin brushed past Hether the moment they entered the room and threw open the lid to the homing lizard cage, reaching in and grabbing the first one that came within reach.
    Without a backwards glance at the confounded and increasingly frightened woman standing behind him, he went to Aderbury’s desk and scribbled out a note. Where are you? I will come for you.
    He hastily wound the scrap of parchment around the lizard’s slender abdomen, its soft white throat calmly pulsing with each breath, no more excited by such treatment than it might have been by the touch of the wind upon its black and yellow speckled skin. Altin tied the note in place with string, a bit roughly, and almost tossed the lizard down. He realized that, wherever she was, she might not have anything to write with, so he took a bit of drafting charcoal from Aderbury’s desk, snapped off a quarter of it, and stuffed that under the string atop the note, which gave the lizard quite a squeeze. He tossed the lizard down, nearly barking Orli’s name as he did it. In the time it took for the lizard’s little feet to touch the ground, it was gone.
    He turned back to Hether. “I’m sorry for the rush, and I promise I’ll explain in more detail at another time. Aderbury is fine, though I know not what the Queen has in mind for him after what has happened. And remember, you must not speak a word of this to anyone. The Queen may not want this news out just yet. I fear it doesn’t make her, or any of us, look very good.”
    Hether could only nod and bat her long lashes over a still-bewildered pair of bright blue eyes. A smile creased her pretty round face as she nodded the promise of her silence. “Be careful,” she said, but he was already gone—once again causing her to marvel at another unanticipated event. Never before had she seen anyone do magic without so much as a single uttered word.
    Altin appeared in sick bay on the Aspect again, near where Orli’s bed had been. The room was still empty. His bare feet allowed him to move silently across the floor, and he peered through the open doorway to where he’d seen Doctor Singh not all that long before.
    The doctor had moved from the desk and was treating a man whose skin was blackened and crisp looking all across his upper arm, shoulder and part of his neck. Altin reflexively cringed upon seeing it, the jagged black edges and the shine of fluids glazing the angry red wounds. Fortunately the man appeared to be unconscious, which was a good thing, for such an injury could be nothing but unbearable.
    Altin watched for several minutes as the doctor worked, the nurses in assistance moving in perfect synchronization with the skilled physician as his treatment progressed, their gloved hands darting in and out methodically, slapping tools precisely into his waiting grip, barely a word uttered in between. Eventually, it was done, and the patient was rolled away by one of the nurses, and Altin couldn’t help but wonder if he were going to be put into one of