"Gown!" snapped Callan, hammering on the door of his cabin. "Gown! Get your arse to airlock two! Right this minute! You hear me, Gown?"
"I hear you," replied Thomas, opening the door and covering a yawn with his hand. "I think the whole ship can hear you..."
"I'll have no lip from you," the first mate snapped, taking a step forward so that he was almost standing on Thomas's feet and glaring down at his upturned face. The wizard instinctively backed away, back into his quarters. "Now move!"
Thomas reached back into the room to grab his robes, containing his travelling spellbook and his spell components in its dozens of pockets, and scurried off down the corridor, hating himself for running from a mundane. He heard Callan's mocking laughter following him around the corner, to where a small group of crewmen were gathered by the airlock door.
"Don't let him get to you," said Matthew sympathetically. "He tries it on with us almost every day. We just ride with the punches, and he eventually gets bored with it and goes away. It's the only way to cope with people like him."
"The only legal way," agreed Thomas, making sure to keep his voice down in case it carried back to the first mate, "but I can dream..."
Matthew chuckled and patted him on the shoulder.
"So, what's going on?" asked the wizard. "Why aren't we on the hanger deck? Aren't we taking a scout ship?"
"We're transferring to another ship," replied the soldier. "They took me aside for a quick briefing a couple of hours ago. They think we won't be attacked if we go in a felisian ship."
"A felisian ship?"
"Yep. they must've made some kind of deal with them."
"But we're not even through the portal yet."
He broke off at the sound of approaching footsteps, but it was only Timothy, the cleric wearing his travelling cloak and a stout pair of walking shoes. "Another volunteer," said Matthew, grinning.
"Yes, and guess who's also volunteered?" said the cleric. "I saw Drenn packing his bags. I think he's hoping for a bit of action."
"The priest of Samnos?" exclaimed Matthew in astonishment. "I thought we were going to a dead world."
"Someone attacked us," pointed out the cleric. "Who knows what's waiting for us down there? Me, I'm glad he'll be with us. That's probably him now."
More footsteps were approaching, but they knew even before they came into sight that it wasn't the priest of Samnos. It wasn't the smart, rapid sound of marching but the dragging, slouching sound of someone who'd made it their life's work to keep as far from the military as possible, and when he came into sight they were surprised to see the gaunt, bony form of Parcellius, the alchemist, glowering unhappily at the small group waiting for him.
"You on the landing party?" asked Thomas, putting a cheerful tone into his voice.
Before the alchemist could answer Saturn appeared at the end of the corridor, striding towards them as if on the way to inflict terrible punishment upon some hapless miscreant. Thomas quailed, certain that the confrontation he'd been dreading was about to take place, but after a brief, withering glance that froze the younger wizard to the spot, Saturn ignored him completely, as if such an incompetent imbecile was undeserving of his attention.
"Is everyone here?" he said, casting his eye across the small crowd. "Where's Drenn?"
The priest of Samnos was right behind him, though, having just arrived, looking magnificent in his blood red robes and gleaming chain mail armour. He was armed to the teeth, with a short sword buckled around his waist, a broadsword strapped across his back and an assortment of knives and daggers hanging from his belt. They all had that look to them that suggested they'd seen regular use, and Thomas, who'd travelled with Priests of Samnos before, doubted that there was a single blade that hadn't sent at least one soul to judgement.
Even so, though, Thomas thought that the man lacked something. Something indefinable. Something that Resalintas had possessed, and even Robert Drake, although to a lesser extent. This man would never become one of the truly great, the wizard somehow sensed. He would do great things, certainly, and achieve great victories, but he would never be much more than he was now. That was in no way a criticism of the man, though. Thomas knew that the church of Samnos needed its common soldiers as much as its Generals, just like any army. Drenn, and all the others like him, were, ultimately, as important to the faith as the likes of Resalintas.
Saturn nodded in satisfaction. "Good. We're going to be crossing space to another ship for the rest of our journey to planet eighty one stroke five, so everyone will need a Necklace of Vacuum Breathing." He opened the airlock door and began removing them from the wall cabinet, passing them out to the landing party.
Thomas and Matthew put them on with scarcely a glance at the huge, glittering diamonds, being well familiar with the magical artifacts, but those who'd never seen them before stared at the giant gems in astonishment. All except Parcellius who regarded his with loathing, looking for a moment as though he would throw it away in disgust. "Magic!" he spat.
"You don't like magic?" asked Thomas in surprise.
"It's messy," replied the alchemist. "I work with chemicals and elements. They follow rules. They behave. If you mix a solution of selberly white into a glass of ochric acid, you get a precipitation of calcium salts every time, no matter how many times you do it. If you mix two magic potions, though, sometimes they do one thing, other times they do something else. Sometimes they do nothing. How can you study something like that? How can you ever understand it? The idea of entrusting my life to something like that..." He shuddered in disgust.
"But the whole ship's full of magic," pointed out Thomas. "You're entrusting your life to it all the time. If you feel that way about magic, why are you here?"
"For the money," replied the alchemist. "Does that disappoint you? I'm not here to save the world, like the rest of you. I'm not here for any noble purpose, I'm just in it for the money. I'm sorry if that shocks you. No, take that back, I'm not sorry at all. Who gives a damn what you or anyone else thinks?" He then turned his back on the wizard, carefully placing the necklace around his neck with the tips of his fingers as if the very touch of it disgusted him. Thomas stared at him in astonishment, then shook his head and turned away.
"We won't all fit in the airlock in one go," continued Saturn, "so we'll go through in two groups. You, you, you and you go first. Wait by the railing until the rest of us come through."
He'd put Matthew in with the first group, wanting them to have someone familiar with vacuum and weightlessness to help and reassure the others. That left Saturn, Thomas and two soldiers. A cavalryman and one of the infantrymen. Roj Villa. Thomas still didn't know much about him, but he seemed an okay kind of guy when he wasn't sulking from the teasing he and George Stone, the other infantryman, kept receiving from the cavalrymen and the navy men. Thomas saw the sullen way he kept glancing at Jop Sonno, the cavalryman, and hoped there wasn't going to be trouble between them.
It took two or three minutes for the airlock to cycle, and every moment of it was an agony for Thomas as he kept his eyes glued to the bare wall, his whole body tingling from the imagined scathing glares he could feel from Saturn. He wanted to look at the other wizard, to see if he was looking at him, but if he looked up and saw that single baleful eye fixed on him he thought he'd have a heart attack there and then.
This is ridiculous! he scolded himself. He's probably put the incident behind him by now. He's probably forgotten all about it. It still took a real effort for him to look at Saturn, though, but he made himself do it, knowing that he'd have to speak to him sooner or later, reporting some piece of information or asking for instructions. If the older wizard was still blaming him for almost destroying the ship, then they'd simply have to find a way of dealing with it and working together nevertheless. It was as simple as that.
He was almost disappointed to find that Saturn was looking at the door, watching the small red flag in the window that indicated whether there was air or vacuum on the door's other side. The flag was slowly lowering, indicating that the air pressure was rising again. Soon they'd be able to open it and go through.
Encouraged, Thomas decided to risk speaking to him, hoping to get some idea, from his response, how the older wizard felt towards him and desperately hoping he might have forgiven him, or at least agreed to give him another chance.
"Master," he ventured hesitantly, therefore. "I'd like you to know that I deeply regret the mistake I made, and that, that..." His knees turned to water as the older wizard turned to stare at him, his single eye burning with deep displeasure. "...that it will never happen again," he made himself continue. "I'd feel a lot better if I knew that I had your, your understanding and your forgiveness."
There was a long silence before Saturn spoke, and Thomas cursed himself bitterly for his foolishness. Why couldn't he have just kept quiet? But he'd had to speak! The agony of not knowing how the older wizard felt about him was killing him.
Learning the answer, though, was almost worse. "I am not here to make you feel better," Saturn said scathingly, the softness of his voice worse than if he'd bellowed at the top of his voice. "You are only aboard this ship because of your ability to sense Rossemian magic. If not for this ability, I would have put you off the ship and replaced you with someone more competent. From this moment on, you are nothing to me but a Rossemian magic detector. I expect you to report immediately if you sense anything, and if you do not I expect you to remain silent. Is that understood?"
"Yes, master," replied Thomas, who was horrified to feel tears brimming in his eyes. He blinked them away before anyone saw them. Fortunately Saturn had turned away from him and was opening the door. He stepped through and the others followed, the soldiers giving the younger wizard sympathetic glances and gentle touches on the arm.
Thomas felt pathetically grateful for the small kindnesses, but the main emotion boiling up inside him was anger. A great towering rage for the older wizard. He actually felt the words of attack spells crowding forward in his head as Saturn closed the door behind them. I could kill him, he thought in astonishment. Right now, in this moment, I'm actually capable of murder. The thought, the truth of it, so surprised and shocked him that the anger vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving just the shame and the fear. His eyes found the bare metal wall again, and this time they stayed there.