The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds by Debra Doyle, James D. MacDonald

usually takes care of them as soon as they show up.”
    “I’ll bet your particular Mage had something to do with that outbreak of Rogan’s,” said Ari thoughtfully. “At a guess, the Quincunx furnished him or his boss with a mutated form of the dry-world virus—and the customer didn’t like it when Munngralla turned right around and tried to sell us the cure.”
    He stopped. When Llannat didn’t take up the conversation again, he went on, “How is Munngralla anyway?”
    The Adept seemed relieved by the change of subject. “Gone,” she said. “Just as soon as we got you into the pod and stabilized.”
    “Didn’t want to stick around for explanations,” guessed Ari. “Since he probably also furnished your friends with the mescalomide for my beer.”
    There was another long pause. Then Llannat shrugged. “Maybe. But you seem to have earned his gratitude somehow. He left the tholovine behind when he disappeared. Two more packets have shown up on the CO’s desk since then, and the Rogan’s cases are responding nicely.”
    She fell silent.
    Ari waited a moment, and said, “It sounds like everything’s worked out for the best. So what’s the problem?”
    The pause this time stretched out even longer than before—so long that Ari began to feel the first touches of a faint, indefinable dread.
    And then, reluctantly, as if she’d delayed it as long as she could before speaking, she told him what had happened to Warhammer on the Ice Flats of Port Artat.

VI. MANDEYN: EMBRIG SPACEPORT GALCEN: PRIME BASE; NORTHERN UPLANDS
     
    W INTER HAD tightened its grip on Embrig in the week or so since Warhammer had blasted out of the spaceport. The snow tonight lay in drifts against the buildings along the Strip. Beka shivered in spite of her Mandeynan-style overcoat, and told herself it was the cold.
    She didn’t believe herself. I feel like I have a target painted on my back .
    So far, though, her disguise seemed to be holding, somewhat to her own surprise. The long coat with silver buttons, the tall boots polished to a high gloss, and the loose white shirt with its elaborate neckcloth and ruffles at the cuffs might be the height of manly fashion in Mandeyn’s northern hemisphere—just the same, Beka suspected that on her the overall effect was more androgynous than anything else.
    She’d said as much to the Professor, back in his asteroid hideout, but he’d just shrugged and said, “You get all kinds in a big galaxy.”
    He’d even waved aside her offer to dispense with the long yellow hair that hadn’t been cut since the start of her schooldays back on Galcen. Instead, they’d wound up dying the hair an unremarkable brown and tying it off into a queue with a black velvet ribbon, making her the picture—or so the Professor claimed—of a young Embrigan dandy with a taste for violence and low company.
    The heavy blaster riding low on her hip, she supposed, was where the violence came in. That, and the Professor’s only concession to what she’d always thought a real disguise should look like, a red optical-plastic patch covering her entire left eye from cheekbone to brow ridge. And as for low company—ahead on the corner, the Painted Lily Lounge flashed its gaudy holosign against the night.
    “Remember,” said the Professor, “your name is Tarnekep Portree, and nobody crosses you more than once.”
    “I feel like an idiot,” muttered Beka. “A scared idiot.”
    The Professor chuckled. “Trust me, the effect from out front is admirably sinister. Ah, here we are.”
    The street door of the Painted Lily slid apart before them. They entered, passing through a chilly antechamber whose inner door waited to open until the outer door had closed—a common setup anyplace in the galaxy where the weather outside got more than average hot or cold, and one that had never made Beka nervous before.
    First time for everything , she thought, as she turned over her coat to the cloakroom attendant. That left her in shirt