By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 by Debra Doyle, James D. MacDonald Page B

a shiver, somewhat less than a full minute.
    “Captain Faramon,” Metadi said, “you have been found guilty of mutiny, for which the penalty is death or such other sentence as a court-martial may direct. Sentencing is delayed upon the pleasure of the court. In the meantime, Captain—I have a few questions for you.”
     
    Grand Admiral sus-Airaalin threw the manacles down onto the bunk. The cuffs were stained red-brown with drying blood, but they were unbroken, and the chain was fixed to the wall of the detention cell.
    “He’s done it, Mael.”
    “I fear so, my lord.”
    “Continue searching.”
    “Yes, my lord.” Mid-Commander Taleion hesitated for a moment before continuing. “It would appear, my lord, that Master Ransome departed the Sword with the jettisoned lifepods.”
    sus-Airaalin had been frowning at the empty restraints; now he lifted his head and regarded Taleion somberly. “You think that, do you?”
    “Ransome’s mind is too well guarded for us to touch it directly,” Taleion said, “but the Circle has been able to tap into the scene that General Ochemet sees. He is, in fact, inside one of our lifepods, and Master Ransome is with him.”
    “Continue searching the ship anyway,” sus-Airaalin said. “If we lose them, the Resurgency will have us flayed alive—and with good reason. Errec Ransome is dangerous.”
    “Perhaps we should have killed him in the first place.”
    The Grand Admiral shook his head. “No, Mael. Ransome is too strong, too focused—kill somebody like that without breaking him first, and he’ll barely notice that he’s dead.”
    Taleion paled slightly. “ Ekkannikh ,” he said, using the old backcountry term for an unpropitiated ghost.
    “Just so,” said sus-Airaalin. “And not the sort that you can buy off with a bit of wine at Year’s End, either.” He frowned again at the manacles. “These restraints should have held the Guild Master, no matter how great his will to escape might have been. They were Circle-forged for that purpose, and more than one life was spent to strengthen them.”
    “Then how—?”
    sus-Airaalin’s mouth twisted. “We’ve been caught in the web of our own cleverness, Mael. It was the Master of the Adepts’ Guild we feared, the Breaker of Circles who was our scourge and our constant enemy; and we made these chains to his measure. If our prisoner was able to break free of them, it can mean only one thing: Errec Ransome is no longer the Master of the Guild—and the vows and obligations that bound him, bind him no longer.”

V. SUIVI POINT: MAIN DETENTION GYFFER: PORT OF TELABRYK
     
    T HE SHORT-TERM holding cells in Suivi Point Main Detention were made out of cheap plast-block and painted an unlovely beige. Beka had seen them before, when Claw Hard’ s chief engineer had gotten himself contracted-in for drunk and disorderly, and she’d been the one who brought down the money to buy him out. Her own brush with what passed for law on Suivi Point had come much earlier, and hadn’t gotten that far.
    She’d anticipated staying in the holding area indefinitely, stretched out yawning on the cell bunk and reading the graffiti scratched into the walls—an extensive and informative collection of obscenities in various languages. Instead, she hadn’t been in short-term holding for fifteen Standard minutes before another deputation of armed ConSecs showed up to escort her down several levels to an area she had never seen.
    The new cell block had a force field over a cipher lock on a blastproof door. Inside, everything was dull black metal, under a pitiless unshaded light from recessed panels protected by armor-glass. Under the measured impact of her escort’s booted feet, the metal floor plates gave back only the dead, anechoic notes of ultra-heavy soundproofing.
    She didn’t need to ask where she was now; Main Detention’s max-pri cell block had been legendary all over the space lanes back when she was a green kid fresh out of a