“It’s not that bad. The girl is pretty, and a vote is a vote.”
“What girl?”
“Della, I think her name was. Enwin’s daughter.”
Tagaret gulped; blood rushed into his face. To say yes would be to cave in to Father—but this was Della—but on the other hand, an arrangement like that would only push Nekantor further ahead, and Nekantor must be stopped . . .
Father seemed to take his silence as permission. “That’s it, son. You’ll be a great asset to our chances.” Sorn produced paper and pen, and Father wrote a note. “Run that over to Doross right away, if you would. Stay to relay any reply.”
“Wait,” Tagaret called, but Sorn didn’t turn back.
Tagaret lay limp and guilty, listening to Father talk about oh, how brilliant Nekantor had been in the Round of Twelve, how Arissen Veriga had done a good job, but had gotten poisoned and they hadn’t yet replaced him.
Tagaret couldn’t stop his mind flying after Sorn, guiltily yearning for Della. Della, Della—her fragrant hair, her strong and graceful hands, her sweet lips—her feet dancing to her sister’s yojosmei in a room of lights and gold. Maybe he’d fallen into a real dream, because Sorn reappeared far too quickly.
Sorn bowed. “Master, they say no.”
“No?” Tagaret clutched his covers. He might as well have fallen through the cavern floor into the chill waters of the Endro. “No?”
“Never mind,” Father said. “There are other Families, and more votes will free up after the Round of Eight. You’ll be just as useful then.”
“Father, wait—”
Father heaved himself up off the bed. “Rest up, Tagaret. That’s the best thing you can do right now. Nobody will want to partner with an invalid.” He and Sorn walked out.
Tagaret lay shaking. Every thought of Della filled him with anguish. How could they have said no? Was it the fever that had ruined him in their eyes?
Someone knocked on the Maze door. Serjer looked in cautiously, then hurried to his side. “Young Master,” he murmured. “I’ve received a message for you.”
“All right.”
Serjer took reciting stance, but spoke softly. “To Tagaret of the First Family, from Enwin of the Sixth Family, greetings in a difficult time.”
Tagaret gasped, “Enwin!”
“It is with joy that I hear of your recovery,” Serjer went on. “The Head of our Council will not have informed you of the reason for his refusal. Against my wishes and her mother’s, Della has been betrothed to candidate Innis of the Fifth Family. He waits only for success in the Selection to partner with her outright. Forgive my directness, to which I am forced by circumstance. Della loves you, but I can’t stop this arrangement unless the First Family makes a more compelling counteroffer. I will appreciate any help you can give me. End message.”
“Oh, Della!” Tagaret whispered. His weakened body suddenly felt as heavy as the layers of rock between him and the heavens far above. “Sirin and Eyn help me.”
* * *
—
There was too little difference between nightmare and waking. Tagaret sat in bed, staring at the wall; he’d managed to get himself to the bathroom this morning, and after some dozing and some breakfast, into his clothes, but there seemed no point in doing anything else. Grief and fear stalked the corners of the room; whenever Mother opened the door, they leapt upon him, trying to tear him apart.
Mother opened the door again, and his stomach twisted, bracing for a new loss.
“It’s all right, love,” Mother said, sitting beside him and patting his knees. “I hate to see you like this. Would you like to go out?”
Go where? To watch Reyn dying? To console Fernar’s parents? To barter for Della like a Melumalai? He curled away from her. “No. I can’t see anyone.”
“Not even Pyaras? He’d love to see you—he’s been so concerned.”
But Pyaras would ask how he was . . . “I can’t.”
Mother sat silent awhile. “Tagaret, I know Serjer came to speak with you last night. He made a point of telling me he’s worried about you, after a message he brought.”
“Della . . .” The word whispered out of him against his will. He pressed his lips shut.
Mother’s eyes widened. She thought for a long time, and finally frowned. “Aloran,” she said. “Where is Garr now?”
“At a meeting with Grobal Fedron, Lady.”
“I’ll need you to carry Tagaret. Have Serjer call ahead for a skimmer.”
Tagaret sat up. “Mother, no . . .”
Mother nodded to Aloran, who bowed, and stepped out.
Soon, Tagaret found himself carried in Aloran’s strong arms to the Conveyor’s Hall. He tried only to look at the servant’s dark hair—not to think of the day the Household had taken Reyn from him. Still, grief churned deep in his guts, remaining long after they had departed.
Aloran drove a long, winding route around any number of Selection detours, so it was impossible to guess what destination Mother intended. They climbed the familiar steep rampway to the fourth level, but didn’t turn into the Melumalai districts, staying instead on the westbound circumference and turning off onto another level rampway. This ramp was wider, curving, rising between two melted columnar formations and through a tunnel to the third level.
Tagaret looked around, frowning. Third level neighborhoods were noticeably less dense, with occasional alleyways and courtyards between lines of buildings. They also didn’t seem quite—distinguished enough, to cater to the nobility.
“Mother,” he said. “What are we doing here?”
“Aloran, turn south,” Mother said. “But don’t pass Fyner Circumference, or we won’t be able to catch the next rampway up.”
“Yes, Lady.”
Tagaret’s throat clenched. “Mother—up?”
Mother looked him in the eye. “Your father can’t stop us this time.”
Mercy, she was taking him to see the sky, now? When he could scarcely walk?
Aloran drove as if he felt no fear, either for Mother or for himself. On the second level, their road ran beside the limestone banks of the Trao, all the way to a massive metal corkscrew which allowed the river to descend from first level to second. Climbing the rampway that curved behind it, Tagaret tried to stay calm by watching the rushing water, but then the cavern roof came down and they popped through a tunnel onto the first level.
The view here was enormous. What few buildings were visible were barns the length of city blocks, and between them lay raised beds of toremi shoots and river-lettuce, each the size of a whole neighborhood. He’d had no idea there were so many shinca trunks in all of Pelismara—but with walls no longer hiding them, they pierced up to the cavern roof all around. Strangest of all were at least four massive green columns, each as broad as one of the barns, which glowed eerily as though lit from within. Every person in sight wore the black leather belt of the Venorai, and every vehicle was a cargo skimmer. One passed by them, loaded with grain that radiated heat.
Aloran pulled over to the side of the road. “Lady, the Safe Harbor Road isn’t navigable by skimmer,” he said. “Do you wish to park at the gate and walk out?”
Tagaret shook his head. They weren’t really doing this. They couldn’t be.
“You’d have to carry Tagaret again,” Mother said. “Surely there are other exits?”
“Mother, what if we just went to the gate and looked?” Tagaret suggested.
She frowned at him.
“But it’s morning,” he protested. “What about the sun?”
She studied his face. “Tagaret—when I felt alone and trapped, the sight of Mother Elinda brought me inspiration. Maybe a glimpse of Father Varin can do the same for you.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Love, we can only try it and see. While we are still unwatched.”
“Lady, I believe I can see where that grain skimmer came from,” said Aloran. “With your permission, I’ll try another way.”
“Of course.”
Aloran turned their skimmer left into another road, directly toward the nearest glowing green column. A second grain-filled cargo skimmer passed them. Slowly, the column took on detail. It wasn’t really a column at all, but a heavy metal scaffold as high as the cavern roof, bursting with vegetation so its skeleton was near-invisible. As they drew closer, some of the leaves became identifiable. Tagaret gulped—they looked much more threatening here than on a plate.
A pair of hugely muscled Venorai men stood to either side of a bright rectangular opening in the column’s base. They approached stiffly with eyes lowered, thumbs hooked into their black belts. Tagaret couldn’t help staring: one man was as brown as the Venorai from the Accession Ball, but the other had strange brown blotches all over his face and arms, and even his fingers.
“May your honorable service earn its just reward, Imbati, sir,” the blotchy man said.
“Venorai,” Aloran replied, with a polite nod. “We wish to ascend.”
To ascend? Tagaret looked more closely at the opening behind them. It was actually a huge cage, large enough for two cargo skimmers. An elevator? Gods . . .
“Imbati, sir,” said the brown-skinned man. “Pardon us, but there are dangers above.”
Mother flicked at her knee impatiently. “We are aware of this, Venorai.”
Both men bowed backward, and Aloran drove straight into the metal box. Tagaret shivered in his seat, glancing at the solid metal roof above, and the glowing greenery all around the railed sides. Were they really doing this?
The cage jerked and lifted. The light flashed to a blinding blaze; the air became an oven. Tagaret’s heart pounded, and he gulped huge breaths of heated air. He looked to Mother in a panic—and discovered she had utterly changed. She glowed bright as a goddess, her eyes blue as sapphires, her hair like liquid gold. Behind her, a brilliant emerald space opened—terrace upon terrace of living plants, where Venorai walked, thoughtless of being burned alive. The space widened, and at last the green walls disappeared, revealing golden fields an incomprehensible distance in every direction. The elevator stopped.
Aloran wordlessly engaged the skimmer’s repulsion and drove them out of their last protection. The sky looked solid, like a bowl of blue steel. In the molten heat of the sun, even Imbati black wasn’t black anymore—Aloran’s hair was almost brown, and his suit gleamed with the red of Sirin the Luck-Bringer. It was too much. Tagaret flung an arm over his eyes, blinking tears of pain.
A sweet, shrill tune whistled into his ears, answered by another, fainter and more distant, and then another.
Music?
He raised his arm slightly. The skimmer had continued to move forward, and now the field on his left was full of Venorai. Their heads were covered by broad straw hats, and their arms were bare and muscular. They moved in teams of four across the heat-shimmering space, carrying humming machines that sucked in the heads of the grasses. Fragments of broken grass clung to the sweat on their sun-baked skin—skin in strange colors like deep brown, or splotchy, or red sprinkled with pepper.
How could there be music in a place like this?
The nearest harvest team was only two skimmer-lengths away when something glinted near them, light against light, and one of the team members shouted,
“Wysp!”
Instantly, the team turned off its grain-suckers and froze in place.
Squinting, Tagaret managed to discern two sparks whirling over the team, caught in a breeze that wasn’t there.
Light footsteps pattered on the road behind him, and a lanky Venorai girl ran past their skimmer, hat bouncing against her back. She lifted a tin whistle to her lips and played a lilting tune—and the same tune echoed back from the opposite corner of the field.
Tagaret stared at her. Music couldn’t possibly come from a less likely source.
The girl turned, and for a second, stared right back at him. Her eyes were the same deep brown as her long, gangly limbs. Then she turned to Aloran and said, “Imbati, sir, you’re in fire danger.”
Aloran didn’t reply—but he did shift the skimmer into reverse, pulling them back slightly. Tagaret looked for fire, but there was nothing except the sun’s heat, and the wysps.
“Tagaret,” Mother whispered, taking his arm. “Look—more!”
She was right. Another wysp had appeared, and then came two more. Five wysps, in a single spot? No one in the Residence would believe it.
The Venorai harvest team split up, walking away fast through the beheaded stalks. A leathery man ran in from another field, taking a place below the wysps; he raised burn-scarred arms, then started walking slowly toward an empty section of the field. Half of the wysps followed him—but the others whirled faster, and suddenly wysps began converging on the spot as if sucked into a vortex. Sparks whirled and flashed, the air shimmered, and the grasses below them started to brown and curl. Wysps could cause fire? Tagaret held his breath in horror, anticipating an explosion. In this heat, what would keep fire from gnashing them all like the teeth of Varin? They would all die!
Venorai all over the field started shouting. Whistle girl shrilled an urgent tune.
Out of nowhere, Arissen appeared. Six of them converged on the wysp vortex with backpack fire extinguishers, and away in the distance, several more ran to a spot in an empty field. An electric zap sounded across the open air—the faraway Arissen had used some kind of weapon. Amid the distant, denuded stalks, black smoke billowed upward, full of hungry flames.
“Heile help us!” Mother cried.
“How could they?” Tagaret asked hoarsely. “Who would set a fire? Aloran, take us back!”
But before Aloran could react, the wysp vortex broke, venting wysps in a glittering swarm toward the faraway smoke. Whistle girl played another shrill melody, and the distant Arissen responded by doing something that caused hissing and even more smoke. Tagaret could hardly breathe—but then the Arissen extinguisher crew in the nearer field relaxed. Looking about, he could no longer see the swarming wysps, and slowly the faraway smoke began to diminish.
An Arissen woman with brown pepper across her red face left the extinguisher crew and approached.
“Sir! Lady!” she said, saluting. “With respect, I strongly suggest that you leave the fields at once. Harvest is an especially dangerous time.”
Unexpectedly, Aloran spoke. “Lady, may we please?”
“Yes, of course, Aloran,” Mother said. “Take us back.”
They returned to the elevator. The metal cage jerked and started down again through the terraces of green.
Tagaret’s heart still pounded. That had been more than a glimpse of Father Varin. How close they’d come to feeling his teeth! But the danger had passed, and they were here, alive, sweating, breathing, returning to a place that suddenly seemed dark and small. He took Mother’s hand.
Mother squeezed his fingers and smiled. “We were brave, weren’t we, Tagaret?”
“We were,” he agreed. Somehow, bravery seemed only natural to this illuminated version of her, and maybe to him, too. He gazed at her all the way down, until the divine light faded from her features. “But, Mother?”
“Yes, love?”
“The Venorai were braver. As brave as the Arissen.”
She nodded. “Yes, I think you’re right.”
“We’re so lucky to be alive.” A sense of terrible import thundered through his veins. His mind whirled with light and heat, flame and smoke, life and death like a swarm of wysps, dangerous and too fast to catch. The melody of the whistles still echoed in his ears. “Mother, you were right, too,” he said. “This changes everything.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A Better Bet
It was distasteful, how Tagaret looked now—
strange, and wrong. Nekantor couldn’t stand to look at his too-bright eyes, his too-thin body. Let Pyaras be the one to suffer that view. Yes, let Pyaras cuddle in Tagaret’s arm on the sitting room couch—so long as they helped him replace Arissen Veriga.
The inconceivable had happened: Tagaret had offered him a deal. I’ll convince Pyaras to help you, Nek, if you’ll help me with the Sixth Family. He’d told Benél, and Benél had laughed—laughed while pushing him down, while murmuring against the back of his neck, That silly girl comes with a vote we need anyway! Your brother’s an idiot.
Benél was right. Tagaret was an idiot—but now, weakened by the fever, he’d become a useful one. More useful than Father, who was supposed to be here and wasn’t.
“Well?” Nekantor demanded. “You said you’d help me, Pyaras.”
Pyaras glared through his dark eyebrows. “They’re not Veriga.”
“Fah,” Nekantor said. Of course they weren’t Veriga. Yet they were like him, because any of these three could be killed. He needed them all, not just one. Then if one was shot, knifed, garroted, poisoned, the others would be there to take him home safely.
Tagaret spoke. “How is Veriga?”
Pyaras crumpled a little. “Not awake.” He sighed. “He’s had a lot of visitors from the Cohort, though. They care about him, Tagaret—and they’ve been really nice to me. You were right.”
Tagaret squeezed his shoulders. “I was too hard on you. But I’m glad it’s worked out as well as it has. May Heile bless him.”
“Never mind all that, you’re wasting time,” Nekantor said. “These are Selection bodyguards, too. No better Arissen exist in Varin. Help me, or Tagaret doesn’t get his girl.”
“Fine,” said Pyaras. “Ask them questions, then. That’s all I do.”
Nekantor snorted. “There are no questions for Arissen.”
“Suit yourself.”
Tagaret sat straighter. “Actually, I’ve got one. Do any of you play the whistle? I mean, the signal whistle?”
“Yes, sir,” said the middle bodyguard, a woman.
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