Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) by John Daulton Page A

tried to open it. It was locked.
    “Your choice,” Altin warned. “You can open it, or I can blow it down. I don’t care which.”
    “He’s with a patient,” she said then. “And if you break it down, I’ll have the constable on you.”
    Altin rolled his eyes and was about to argue when he heard the doctor’s voice coming down the hall. The door opened a moment later, revealing the tremendous bulk of Leekant’s top physician and the well-dressed figure of Lady Falfox, the self-proclaimed nobility of Leekant, though in truth merely the wife of one of its more prosperous citizens, Bucky Falfox, proprietor of the Patient Peacock Inn.
    “And so, Madame, I’ll have the alchemist mix you up some tom-tom and willow powder and bring it by this afternoon. Mix it in tea twice a day, and you’ll be as good as gold by the end of the week,” the doctor was saying as they emerged.
    “Oh thank you, Doctor,” she exclaimed. “You have no idea how much your work means to me. You cannot imagine how I do suffer, and my husband could not care less about all my agonies. He’d rather write another campaign speech than spend the tiniest bit of energy on sympathy for me.”
    “Yes, I’m quite sure,” agreed the doctor as he opened the front door and gently guided the woman outside.
    She dabbed a soft palm up to the long feathers projecting from her sparkling turban as she stepped out into the breeze. “Oh yes, it’s quite true,” she began, but the doctor, smiling, politely cut her off.
    “Goodbye. Don’t forget to take your medicine.”
    He turned to Altin once the door was shut and exasperation flared his features for a heartbeat or two. “If I were Bucky, I would have hung myself years ago.”
    Altin didn’t have time to empathize. “I need a divination,” he said in lieu of greeting. “Orli is going to be executed if I don’t find her. She’s being taken somewhere on planet Earth, and I have to get to her. Her execution is certain after what has happened now.”
    “Whoa, slow down,” demanded the ponderous physician. “What are you talking about? What has happened?”
    The frustration that gasped from him was nearly as loud as a gorgon’s rasp, but he knew he’d have to explain it all in detail before the doctor could divine. Divination was about what the caster knew as much or more than it was about what they might find out.
    Altin grabbed the doctor by the upper arm, his hand not even wrapping around half of the doughy girth, and nearly dragged him back to his office. The doctor was wheezing by the time he made it to the creaking chair at his desk.
    “The Earth people tried to attack the Hostile world. I found out, or Orli did and then I did, that the planet is alive. It has a name, Blue Fire, and apparently it is female. The extermination of the people on the Andalian world was a terrible mistake. Blue Fire, through Orli, tried to explain, to apologize, but the fleet wouldn’t listen. They’ve lost too many ships and too many people. So, I, with permission from the Queen, helped her to thwart the attack from Earth, in hopes of getting it all sorted out. But, well, they took me captive, and then Her Majesty took that as an affront—you know how she is—and, so words were exchanged, the fleet was getting ready to fire on us, so, well, Blue Fire and I used a seeing stone Conduit Huzzledorf’s people sent to Earth the day before to locate the planet for ourselves, and then we, Blue Fire and I, sent the whole fleet home. Which didn’t seem like a bad idea at the time, but then, it turns out Blue Fire sent a bunch of her minions—eggs she calls them, but orbs in the eyes of the fleet—and, well, it seems she is bent on taking out Earth in the same way she took out Andalia, although she denies it entirely, which I know, because I went to her and asked.” By the time he was done speaking, he was nearly as out of breath as the doctor had been from the effort of hustling through the hallways.
    The doctor