by Mark Eller
Han Chuk was fortunate in his status. While facing the emperor, Lioth wished her influence was his equal. Clack needed to vent his anger on somebody.
"You're telling me a war band of twenty-five killed a group of thirty-two. Then, while escaping from you, they killed another fourteen warriors. Forty-six people, General. Forty-six, and all you have to show in return are eight heads when I ordered you to bring back thirteen."
"Most of the deaths were caused by traps," Han pointed out. "Only three died in battle."
"Two of those three were killed by a single defender who was already dying, and you've not mentioned the three who had their throats cut! The others were killed by traps that should never have been a danger. What happened to your scouts? Why did they see nothing?"
Accusing eyes turned to Lioth. She swallowed, wanting to fidget or shift on her feet, but Han Chuk stood beside her. His composure was an example she had to follow if she were to retain his respect.
Lioth cleared her throat. "Emperor Clack, the person who did the throat cutting did not leave with the others. I tried to follow her, but could not. She hides her trail better than anyone I have ever encountered. Our guess is she has gone by some overland route to meet the others at a prearranged place." She drew in a deep breath. "I admit I missed two traps. Those deaths are my fault."
"I missed more than two, so the people with me took most of the fatalities," Han immediately defended her. "The things were fiendishly clever and not hastily constructed. Most were set days earlier."
Han Chuk's eyes regarded her. Unlike the Emperor's, his were filled with warmth and respect. "Before we left on the hunt, this warrior bragged about her skill. I was determined to humble her before the war band but could not. She thought she spoke the truth, but she is much better than she implied."
Wrinkles furrowed across the emperor's forehead. He was not a happy man. Lioth wished there was someplace she could duck.
"So you are saying?"
"I would be very unhappy if something happened to Lioth. She is too valuable to waste." Han paused. "There is more."
Clack released a noise, half grunt and half sigh. "I don't know if I can forgive her for losing the throat cutter's trail. I'll let you know if I decide to punish her."
"There is more," Han Chuk repeated.
Clack's sharp gesture said his temper neared breaking.
"What!"
Han nodded to her. Frowning, Lioth pulled free the paper she'd carried for far too long. She held it awkwardly, not knowing what to do with it.
"One of our dead had this under her hand," Han Chuk said. "There is writing on it."
"What does it say?" Clack demanded.
"We are warriors!" Han snapped. Lioth did wince then. Han Chuk's loss of composure might be a precursor to him taking action. The last thing she wanted was to be nearby if the man decided to attack the emperor. "We are not scholars who spend our lives leaning over words."
Clack gestured impatiently. Lioth handed the folded paper over, glad to be rid of the thing. Taking it with his left hand, his only remaining hand, he looked it over.
Clack snorted. "It has my name on it so I suppose it's meant for me."
Folding it open, he remained silent while reading. His face grew angry pale.
"Well," Han demanded.
"It's written in Nefran," Clack said, his voice a hard crack. "It doesn't concern you."
"The writer killed several of my people."
"'I am sorry I almost missed you,'" Clack read aloud. '"You have my assurances it will not happen again.'" He crumpled the paper in his fist and threw it to the floor. "Scout, you're forgiven your failure. This woman is a trained assassin in possession of a Talent Stone."
"Turner's people seem to have more than their share of Stones," Han noted.
Clack grimaced. "Yes, they do. Somehow, Turner figured out what they are or how to make them. It's one of the secrets we'll jerk out of him before he dies, or maybe we'll get one of his people to turn traitor."
He looked down at the letter, frowned, and suddenly gestured with his stump. "Get out of here! Both of you. Get out."
Lioth held the tent flap for Han Chuk. Once he passed, she dropped the flap and hoped she would never come to the emperor's attention again. Even more, she hoped the future would not bring her into contact with the assassin who owned a Talent Stone.
Han Chuk gestured for her to walk with him.
"You will mention this letter to no one," he ordered, "and remain silent about Talent Stones."
"Of course," she replied. "It's the emperor's business." She remained silent for a few paces. "I don't understand about the letter anyway."
"The assassin is his daughter. Her bullet claimed his hand."
"Oh." Lioth thought for a few moments, feeling uncomfortable. One day, she knew, she would meet this assassin face to face.
"Crap."
"Exactly," Han replied.
Chapter 8
"Go, go go!" Gloria screamed.
"Come On! Push it, baby! Push it!" Sabrina called out.
"Mmmm Mmmm. Sabrina darling, the man has got some legs on him, and a most adorable backside. I told you he was something. Look at him fly."
"Adonis no longer walks upon the earth," Sabrina breathed. "He now has wheels."
"Don't forget he's mine."
"I'll fight you for him."
"Battle's on," Gloria challenged, "and you'll lose. No man or woman can resist my eyes."
"They made my knees grow weak last week," Sabrina admitted. "Tell you what, we can share."
"Fifty-fifty."
"Straight up."
"What if he's already married?"
"Lorn's not married," Sabrina said. "I asked."
"You mean you already talked to him and didn't tell me? I thought you told me everything."
"Got a date with him after the race."
"Those two have a serious case of raging hormones," Grebfax noted idly.
"You can hardly blame them," Sybil Lesson replied. "Look at the man. He's gorgeous."
"Which has been brought to my attention on several occasions," Grebfax admitted. "Lorn Kelsey's good looks have caused me no end of trouble. I'd have gotten rid of him long ago if not for the fact he's worth two of anybody else."
"Daddy." Autumn's hand gripped Aaron's. "Why haven't you had runabout races before? They're flying."
Aaron smiled as he watched the runabouts crest over the top of a hill. Technically, Autumn was correct. The racers did occasionally fly. When they came over the hilltop, there were a few brief moments when the wheels did not touch earth. To the uninitiated, it probably looked stunning. Aaron found it merely interesting. He recalled watching real races on the holovision when still a child. The skill of these racers fell far short of professional riders on high-tech machines.
"So how is the building going?" he asked.
"Well enough," Grebfax replied. "Following your orders, we stopped working on the houses. The tunnels are dug out, and the main university building is coming along, though at a slower pace than I would like. I hate to criticize the man who's paying me, but I have to tell you those walls are about six times thicker than they need to be. We could speed things up if you let me taper them off some. The way it is now, just finding the necessary stone uses a large part of our workforce."
The runabout riders were back again. Weeds and grasses were caught in drive belts and pedals. The clothing on most of the riders was dirty and torn from frequent spills, proving their skills did not yet match their ambitions. Even as Aaron watched, one woman's runabout hit a bump, wobbled, and went down with a clatter. Several riders swerved to miss her, but not all succeeded. Two runabouts collided with the fallen machine. Both riders went down as the first woman scrambled out of the way.
The last of the racers passed the fallen riders. The two females quickly separated out their vehicles and rejoined the race. Lorn Kelsey, however, was not so fortunate. His feet spun uselessly on the runabout's pedals. Mouthing unheard wo
rds, he dismounted and pushed his runabout off the makeshift track.
"Foul!" Sabrina cried out from behind Aaron. "Unfair!"
"But this is good," Gloria told her loudly. "You get to throw lots of sympathy at him tonight."
"Oh--Hey! Brilliant woman."
"Looks like his running belt broke," Edna Balandice observed in a quieter voice. "I've had the same thing happen a few times so it must be a design flaw. Mister Turner, you should look into fixing it."
"Aaron."
"What?"
"In this city, inside Chin, I'm called Aaron same as you want me to call you Edna. I've had enough of Mister Turner over there." He made a vague gesture to include most of the world. "The One God knows I'm also tired of being called Emperor Turner. My given name is Aaron. I just want to hear it sometimes."
Her smile was slow in coming, but Aaron liked what it did to her face. "Well then, I suppose we are all on a first name basis, but it seems strange being so familiar with an emperor."
Aaron returned her smile. "Maybe you could forget the emperor part, too."
"It's a deal."
"Here they come again!" Autumn exclaimed. "This time is for the winner."
The finish was, Aaron decided, ironic. The winner proved to be a small woman on a large runabout while second place was taken by a man so large his runabout looked like a toy. Third place seemed indeterminate because the line was simultaneously crossed by a pack of four riders who all claimed the honor. The ensuing argument might have become serious if several spectators had not intervened. Pulling the arguing participants apart, they offered them warm beer.
Grebfax released a sigh. "I saw more than one dirty trick out there. Guess I'll have to come up with a set of rules."
Delmac broke his long silence. "No, this is their game. Let them play it with purpose." His voice held a deep sneer. "Only a few scratches and no broken bones. They play a game meant for children."
Aaron chose to ignore the man's words, though he used a moment to hope the surly Freelorn would become easier to deal with in a few more days. Delmac's sour attitude could ruin the brightest outlook. A few weeks spent near the Clansman would probably make him contemplate suicide with a dull knife.
"Okay," he said to Edna and Sybil. "The race is over. What does Leona want me to see?"
Sybil shrugged. "Nothing much, really. The cave is only a few hundred feet deep so it didn't take long to do a preliminary survey. Leona thought you might want to hear her initial impression."
"I brought her out here, so I suppose I better listen to what she has to say. Autumn, I'll be back to see you before I leave. Why don't you have Mister Grebfax show you around?"
"I still haven't decided if I want to stay here," Autumn warned. "I might go with you."
"Make a decision before I come back," Aaron told her, though any decision she made would have little weight with him. She could stay here, or she could go back to Jutland. He provided the transportation and would not allow Autumn to set a foot inside a Chin encampment where so many people ran around half-naked or worse. He gestured toward the two women. "To the cave."
Delmac insolently followed along.
* * *
Leona Harbor carefully placed a dark gray chunk of stone in his hand. Aaron looked at it, turned it over, and studied an edge that could once have been sharp. It might, he decided, be a fairly lousy ax.
"The first thing we did,"Leona told him, "was get rid of all the debris lying around." She gestured toward a pile beside the cave opening. "I'll eventually spend a few hours looking over this trash. I don't expect to find much. Anyway, my initial evaluation didn't show me anything older than a few hundred years. Since the last five hundred years of the Chin civilization have been fairly worked out, I don't see a reason to become excited over it."
Aaron took a closer look. The pile consisted of broken pottery shards, bronze arrowheads, spearheads, and things looking like hollowed out stone bowls.
"This debris is the reason I brought you here," he admitted.
Leona's smile was thin, tinged slightly by faint humor. "I suppose the other reason was those charcoal scratchings on the wall."
"Well…yes."
She shook her head. "Sorry. I've visited more than twenty sites with the same sort of drawings. They don't mean anything. Just some bored cave dwelling human entertaining herself by marking the wall with a burnt stick. I seriously doubt any of those pictures are older than two hundred years."
"So the place is a bust," Aaron said, disappointed.
This time, Leona's laugh was genuine. "Oh, no, I don't know exactly what we have here, but we already know we have something." She raised a hand to rub against the back of her neck. Red veins showed in her eyes, a sign she had not slept well the night before. Lowering her hand, she gave him a small smile.
"I wish your cave had taller ceilings. Walking at a crouch will tangle up my muscles more than I care to think about. It's how we decided where to excavate, you know."
"No, I don't know. I've only been about fifty feet past the opening."
"Then you haven't seen the fire pit?"
"There's a fire pit?"
She laughed again. "Yes. About two hundred feet back, we found a chamber where the ceiling is almost five feet high. The place has a fire circle, and it shows signs of long use. There might be a chimney vent cutting through the upper rock, pretty usual in these circumstances. We mostly find the vent has been blocked by roots and vegetation."
"So you found a floor and signs of a fire," Delmac said. "I fail to see the significance." His habitual scowl deepened.
"That is the significance," Aidan Franks said, pointing to the rock Aaron still held. "We know pretty much all we want about the last few hundred years, but we know almost nothing about the Indigene Period."
"Wait a minute." Aaron studied the rock dubiously. "I'll admit I don't know much about archeology, but I did hear stuff when I was younger, and I never heard of an Indigene Period."
"We've been trying to figure things out for a while before you came along," Aidan said condescendingly. "We didn't have your books where everything was worked out for us, so we had to come up with our own names. By the way, what you call archeology, we call historiography. I promised your people back in Jutland I'd set you straight."
"Great." Aaron wondered what it would be like to make it through one entire day without feeling like an ass. "So this ax is an interesting find."
Leona reached out to take it from him. Her hand cupped the rounded edge, holding it so the flat sides were between her palm and fingers. The once sharp edge protruded past the heel of her hand.
"This flint skinning knife," she said, "was found after only two inches of dirt had been brushed aside. "It's a very useful tool for cutting through thick hides. More importantly, it shows sophistication in both design and manufacture." She opened her hand so the flat side showed. "You can see faint lines from where the hammer stone initially struck off flakes, but mostly you only see where thin flakes were removed in a most exacting manner, probably with an antler point."
For a change, Delmac's expression showed something other than contempt or disdain. Aaron felt surprise at seeing glimmers of curiosity in the man.
"So these things have been studied before?" Delmac asked. "What can you learn from them?"
"I wouldn't say they've been studied," she hedged. "At least not here. They've been found before, and some people speculated about them, but nobody really knew what they signified."
"So how do you know how it was made?"
Shrugging, she looked slightly embarrassed. "I stayed up late and looked through Mister Turner's books. Something clicked when Laura found this, so I went back to one and found a picture which looked almost identical."
Aaron gritted his teeth. "So what you're really telling me is you have no idea what you found. You don't know if it's significant or important. You don't know if anyone else will be interested in it, and you don't know what you have unless you look in a book created on
an entirely different world."
"That about sums it up," Leona agreed. "Of course, histologists never know what they've found until they've found it. They never know if a site has important finds until they find the thing they've not yet found. Besides, I don't care if anybody else is interested in what I'm doing. The only important thing is my interest. Now, if you don't mind, I have a cave floor to excavate."
After tossing the flint knife to Aidan, Leona strode toward the cave opening. Aidan grinned, ran a thumb across the knife's dull edge, and put the thing in his pocket.
"To-da-loo," he said before following his boss's example. Sybil followed.
Aaron shook his head, wondering exactly what he might have let himself in for by bringing this group to his new city. He watched each of them light a lantern before crouching down to duck walk into the cave.
"Strange people," Delmac observed wryly.
"Very," Aaron agreed.
"Interesting though," Delmac continued. "They are full of thoughts and ideas. I find myself amazed by the directions their imaginations have taken them."
"They're smart," Aaron agreed as he watched the cave opening. The last flickering glimmer of lantern light disappeared into its depths. The explorers were either far inside the cave or there were turnings deeper within he had not seen before. Leona and Aidan were busy for now, so he would not have to deal with them for a few hours, and he still had close to a full day's work waiting. He needed to inspect the new tunnels, and he wasn't happy with Grebfax's attitude on building the university's walls. Even though it was slow work, Aaron wanted every stone properly squared off on the front and back, and each cut to interlock with the one beside it.
By the Gods, everything else he touched might be only temporary, but he'd to see to it this university remained standing five hundred years from now.