Under the Rushes

by Amy Lane

  The healer said Areau needed to come out. His wounds had healed, but they’d been mishandled and had scarred terribly. The healer danced around Areau’s state of mind, but Dorjan knew—without even seeing him again—that the playful, brilliant friend of his boyhood was never going to smile into Dorjan’s eyes again.

  “We are aware of Lokargo Areau’s difficulties,” the woman said, and she lowered her voice gently. “We understand that the disaster that killed so many of your men had a terrible effect on his mental health.”

  “None of our men died,” Dorjan responded crossly. “I don’t know where they’ve been reassigned, but before my cricket crashed, they’d effectively sprayed the fire-retardant bubble. Those battalions were going to be fine! But the civilians in the keep—they were going to die!”

  “Are you saying the stratego and three lokogos all lied about the casualties of Kiamath Keep?”

  “I’m saying I landed that cricket, told them there were civilians in the keep, and the stratego fired a magnesium charge at the keep without even resolving the issue!”

  There was a breathless silence because this had not been part of the questioning.

  “That’s impossible,” the oldest Triari stated. “If that charge had gone off, there wouldn’t have been any children to rescue!”

  “I shot the charge out of the air, Triari—how do you think the fire started?”

  That airless, motionless void again, and then the youngest Triari—the other man—cried out in amazement. “That’s impossible!”

  There was a murmur in the Council Forum, and Dorjan’s face heated. “The cricket set the probability at 15 percent,” he mumbled.

  That silence grew weighted and unhappy, and he looked up into the faces of the Triari and saw three people caught in a sudden agonizing conundrum.

  “Why would he do that?” the youngest Triari mumbled. “Why would he fire on an occupied keep?”

  The other two looked at him, and the oldest spoke next, his jaw hardening—but not with resolve. As Dorjan grew in wisdom and politics, he recognized that look more and more. He was a man who feared something he believed was too big for his own comprehension.

  “He wouldn’t,” the man said, and even though his voice lacked conviction, the other two nodded in agreement.

  Dorjan let out a wordless bark of a laugh, and the three Triari were suddenly a united front.

  “Is there anything funny about this, young man?”

  Dorjan shook his head and let the fury shake in his voice. “There is nothing funny about people who fear the truth so badly that they paint a thin lie on a flame bubble and pretend it’s a steel wall.”

  He watched their mouths open and close in shock and indignation, and suddenly the only thing he could hear was a burbling, hearty laughter. The laugher was joined by another, and another, and when Dorjan looked up, his father was wiping tears from his eyes and the battalion of men Dorjan had led—who had not been allowed to testify, not even Lokogos Dre, who had sent him missives all week saying that he would come out and tell the truth, planning be damned—were all barking bitter, angry laughter at the Triari.

  The lead Triari smashed his gavel on the marble stone several times, demanding order, and finally he snapped, “Bimuit’s balls, Kyon, what in the name of steel and stone are you laughing at?”

  Dorjan’s father sobered abruptly. “You, Archon! You’re going to rob my boy of his commission and his good name on pretense, and the whole Forum—the entire lot of us—saw when you realized it was a lie. I’m laughing because you’ll carry it through out of false pride. I’m laughing because when this country is plunged into warfare and ruin in ten years, only the people in this room will know you could have saved us.”

  The Triari blushed. “You do not own so much land that we can’t remove you from council,” he thundered.

  Kyon stood. “Try it,” he said softly, “and see how fat your coffers grow without your sulfur and your bronze and your lumium and coal all mined from a rolling gravity rock tethered in the aether. My blood and I know the secrets to the asteroid mines, and nobody in this room will get it from us. I dare you to remove us and see how bloated your precious state grows when you’re deprived of our resources. If you don’t have the stones for that, I suggest you make sure me and mine always have a seat.” Kyon bowed low and deeply. “I’m sorry, my son. I will not watch you be tortured at the whim of fools. I’m going to go do something about the one thing that causes you the most pain. Your men will bear you to the town house—I have a rabbit ready.”

  Kyon bowed again, and Dorjan took several deep breaths and battled the heat behind his eyes. His father loved him—of that there had never been in doubt, not when he’d been found in the pantry kissing Areau’s cousin and not when he’d joined the military. There had been some surprise on both occasions, some fear for him in his chosen path, but no disgust and no ultimatums. His father had said it was a good thing he had Dorjan’s older sister to keep up the niskety blood, and, in the case of the kissing, had looked meaningfully at Areau’s cousin and told him he might need to come by another day. After that, he and Dorjan had spent a quiet afternoon baking pies of all things. Pie was, after all, why his father had come to the pantry in the first place. Eventually the pie had been eaten, and his father had talked gently of politics and of things Dorjan must not reveal except to a chosen few.

  “Like Areau?” Dorjan had asked anxiously.

  Kyon had nodded and wiped more flour across his broad-cheeked, perspiring face. Dorjan had his father’s bull chest, square jaw, and almond-shaped brown eyes but his mother’s narrow cheekbones and small, even nose—this combination was pleasing, he had realized early, even to young men. His father, too, was handsome, and although he was broad and heavy with age, Dorjan had always thought of him as vital. The laugh in the Forum had been like him, and the blunt speech had too.

  His allusion to getting Areau out of the asylum was as subtle as he got, and Dorjan was grateful. He had felt the power of his father’s support, and now he could do without it. As long as Areau could come home.

  AREAU did not come home that night. The men of Dorjan’s battalion helped him into the rabbit when the Triari were done with him, and one climbed inside with him. The interior of the mechanical palanquin was fitted with cushions and a nice supportive chair, all in dark navy and tan, and it enclosed the two of them in a comforting, gauze-covered shell. There was barely a quiver to the palanquin as the rabbit lowered its mechanical back legs to the ground, and the two in-line rubber wheels, much like the cricket’s, made contact with the rail. Dorjan allowed his junior officer to key in their destination. The Triari had done pretty much what his father had predicted, and he was weary beyond words.

  He fell asleep as the rabbit bore him to his family’s Thenis town house, and was not aware of the chair folding out to a couch and lowering into a bank of pillows. He awoke when his father entered the rabbit with a steaming bowl of sweetened grain mixed with fruit, and rolled him gently awake.

  “Dori—Dori, son, I need you to wake up.”

  Dorjan rolled over and groaned, cursing the damned bones and joints, which were still sore after a month. He’d visited the niskets briefly after his stay in the hospital, but he certainly couldn’t bring them from Kyon’s Gate to the city. The tiny, secret beings were exceptional healers, even if sometimes their idea of healing was harrying a body out of bed before said body felt truly rested. At least when they did that, they flickered and buzzed around the offending muscles and rubbed the stiffness out. This was just his father with breakfast, and most likely unwelcome news as well.

  “What do we have to do?” he asked, startling fully awake and taking the sweet-grain because he was soldier enough to know his body needed fuel.

  Kyon’s jaw was set grimly, and he shook his head. “Something’s happening with Areau—either tonight or tomorrow. They’re moving him, doing some sort of radical treatment on him—something. Did I miss anything yesterday?”

  �
�They kicked me out of the military,” Dorjan said brightly, even though it had stung at that moment and ached now like an amputated limb. He had wanted to serve people. He’d been born to position, but his father never let him forget he needed to honor that. That’s why he’d gone into the military when the government had talked about the threat from the west. After the derision of his peers over his father’s refusal to overmine the asteroids, he had wanted to serve. Now it felt as though the privilege had been cut from his future like a leg with a festering wound.

  “But…,” Kyon said, and Dorjan had to remind himself that his father was, had always been, smarter. Not just smarter than Dorjan but smarter than the politicians, smarter than the businessmen—just smarter. He was a good man—a jovial man—but very often he stated the truth of things when the less astute preferred not to see it. As Dorjan grew older, he realized his father made enemies because of that. The floundering, the incompetent, the entitled—a man like his father, a fat, jolly man who had gotten his hands dirty in his own mines, was beneath them.

  How dare he know more about the world?

  “But what?” Dorjan asked carefully.

  “Did they take you out of the succession, boy?”

  Dorjan’s eyes widened. “No! No. Why would they?” Dorjan wouldn’t be the first disgraced landowner’s son to inherit his legacy regardless.

  Kyon nodded thoughtfully. “Because they think they can use Areau to control you. They know you want him, and they want you to dance to their tune. But they can’t keep him there without a reason. It’s… it’s a bad moment for your friend, Dori, make no mistake.”

  Dorjan shoveled a spoonful of fuel into his mouth and swallowed. “Fine, Da. What do we need to do?”

  THEY wore white robes with the cloth helmet that covered the face, and snuck in through the back, where some of the staff would sit outside, smoke their chinkly pipes, and relax during shifts. Not a soul watched or cared as Dorjan, his father, and the mercenary physician they’d hired strode in through the kitchen while meal preparation was in full swing.

  Of course, if they were working half as hard at keeping their gullets from rising in their throats as Dorjan had to, they wouldn’t have much left in them to notice. Feaugh! What a stench! Dorjan thought of Areau, locked in here for the last month, eating the slop he saw prepared in the kitchen, and wanted to cry. Unfortunately the kitchen wasn’t the worst part.

  Rats, cockroaches—yes, and the cockroaches were bigger than niskets, that was the truth—but as they walked the bare concrete floors in rooms with painted steel walls, those weren’t the worst of the asylum, not by a long shot.

  The worst part was the inmates—women laughing hysterically, banging on the bars of square metal cages, or men whimpering in corners, systematically plucking the hairs from their heads one by one. There was screaming and sobbing and the stink of urine left to corrode through the floor of a cast-iron platform, and walls painted and scrubbed a blinding antiseptic white, with no other color anywhere except the blood the inmates had shed to decorate on their own.

  Oh Areau—how could you exist in this terrible place!

  They found Areau in the infirmary, strapped down to the table with cast-iron restraints and chains. He thrashed about and moaned when they first walked in. Dorjan ripped off his cloth helmet and bent down before his friend, lowered his face to Areau’s, and stroked back his wild, sweat-stained yellow hair.

  “You’ll be fine,” he murmured, but he had to work hard not to howl. Oh, Areau… what had they done…

  Or not done, as the case was. Areau had been burned in the battle, but his wounds—oh, Bimuit! A week with the niskets at Kyon’s Gate and they would have had him cleaned up with minimal scarring, but here…

  They were festering, blistering, with the lack of care.

  “What in core’s depth have you been doing!” he snarled at the physician, who was currently applying balm to the oozing chafes on Areau’s wrists. Areau’s grimace was twisting, almost orgasmic, at the pressure to the bloody sores. “How can you call yourself a healer if he looks like this!”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” The physician was a slight older man, with a fringe of white hair and a small, bitter face. “I came in and tended to his wounds, and the next day, all my work was undone and the… the filth they’d rub into them….” He shuddered, and Dorjan glared at him.

  “Tend to them now,” he muttered and sank back down to Areau, putting his face close so Areau would see him through the pain.

  “We’ll care for you, Ari. We’ll take care of you. We’ll fix this.”

  “You came,” Areau breathed out. “You came for me. They told me you’d forget about me, that you didn’t care.”

  Dorjan shuddered and pulled the neck of his white cocoon open to the navel so Areau could see, see the stitches from the operations where even the niskets wouldn’t have been able to heal him, see the still fading bruises and the paleness and the ruin.

  “I could barely stand,” he whispered. “And we had to find you first. Oh, Ari, did you think I’d ever leave you behind?”

  Areau’s good hand was free now, and he reached out and traced the scars, his touch tentative enough to tickle. Dorjan endured it without flinching. Areau had earned the right to touch him with impunity.

  “I… I need to hold on to something,” he muttered, and Dorjan gave him his hand.

  “Hold on to me.”

  His father and the physician had the restraints uncoupled by then, and they threw a clean gauze robe over his skinny, ravaged body and a gauze helmet over his once-bright hair. Dorjan supported one side of him and his father the other, and together they walked back out the doors of the asylum. They had just cleared the kitchen when someone noticed.

  “What’s with him?”

  “Stomach ailment,” Kyon supplied. “Caught from one of the patients—very contagious!”

  Dorjan shook Areau gently. “Barf, Ari?”

  Areau startled but, after seeing Dorjan wink over his mask, started making horrible retching noises, and whoever it was backed off.

  It was a good moment, and it cheered them, all four, as they made their way to the rabbit Kyon had secreted in a nearby stable. They rounded the corner toward comparative safety, and there was a sudden motion, a man in black coming near them and flitting away, and just that suddenly, Dorjan’s father went down in a blur of white and scarlet.

  Dorjan grunted as all of Areau’s weight sagged into his arms, and he shoved his friend at the physician. Areau barely stirred from his trance, staring and whimpering as he looked at Kyon’s heavy body on the ground. Dorjan fell to his knees and saw that—oh, core’s depth—his father’s throat lay slashed open, the blood pooling, and his father’s eyes closing just that quickly. Only that? Only a knife flashing in the fading sunlight? Was that all it took to end a man’s life?

  “Bimuit!” Dorjan turned toward the physician. “Get him to the rabbit and wait there!” he ordered, and military or not, something of those years studying for command must have held, because Areau and the physician struggled on. Dorjan gently slipped his father’s silver pendant through the slowing pump of blood and over his head. The pendant was an unspoken part of the landowning in Kyon’s Gate, and he would need it later. Once it was in his pocket, he glanced quickly over his shoulder to make sure they were gone. His last look at them showed them walking through the stable toward his father’s rabbit.

  Dorjan was hurtling down the street by then.

  He shed his disguise as he ran, leaving it on the concrete and the rabbit rail as he leapt. The knife man had been quick, there was no denying it, but he’d hit Kyon’s jugular, and he’d spattered a lot of blood on himself. His first footsteps, his direction, were all written in Kyon’s blood, and once Dorjan started to run… well, before his injuries, he’d been practicing in steam armor and gravity simulations with the thought that he’d be fighting in Karanos.

  Thenis—Biemansland as a whole—had none of the gravity difficulties brought about by
overmining, and Dorjan had been nisket healed after he’d been allowed to leave the hospital. His sprint wasn’t at its fastest, but it was still faster than the man who’d killed his father.

  The people of Thenis prided themselves on clean, orderly streets, with trees planted in holes in the concrete and the rails that kept the steam-powered centipedes and the rabbits in line, which managed to keep the streets uncluttered by rickeys or hexahorses or any of the usual urban detritus. Dorjan was lucky—he had a straight enough shot to gain sight of the man.

  But he followed the man to a part of the city he didn’t recognize, and even as the buildings went from stone to unpainted wood, he was surprised. The change was so complete—from soaring skyscrapers to two-story storefronts, to ramshackle tenements, to pasteboard roofs between the walls of an alley.

  And still Dorjan ran. His lungs burned, his heart screamed painfully in his chest, but as long as he could see—

  His target turned right and ducked under the pasteboard roofs of the mock-up ghetto, and Dorjan leapt and ran atop those roofs, grateful that his usually bulky muscles had leaned this last month in recovery. He spotted the frames of the tenements under the pasteboard, and ran on those. He heard his target’s progress as he went, and he had a moment to wonder: how was it that they were in the stewing seams of the city, but directionwise it seemed as though they should have turned a full circle, right back to the glittering, clean heart of it?

  The alleyway opened up, and Dorjan, by whatever instinct, rolled to use his momentum and sank to a crouch in the shadows of the alley as he listened to the chaos underneath his feet.

  In front of him, at the end of the alley, was a courtyard. It was lovely. Trees soared up between pale buildings that sported moldings carved intricately with animals and other symbols of luck, all glistening with bronze frames and brilliant flames of windows in the fire of sunset.