Exile's Return

by Gayle Greeno

  Despite Darl’s attempt at calmness, the vehemence of his words, the implied reproach assailed Baz. Never before had Darl brought up his heritage, thrown it in his face like that. Hosea Bazelon’s memory was sacred, a hero who did what had to be done, no matter the cost to him. So, the true gift he’d brought to Darl with all his heart to lay at his feet was unwanted before he even unveiled it—that he, Bazelon Foy, had already put into motion a plan to rid Canderis of Resonants. Relieve Darl of his worries and fears, sweep the land clean. It could be done, the culmination of his grandfather’s dreams, and he’d already begun the task. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

  “Well, do you?” Darl pushed unmercifully, his words hammering at him, “Do you?”

  “But you’re here as a High Conciliator to protect us!”

  “I’m here to protect both sides, all Canderisian citizens. And we don’t even always know who’s Us and who’s Them, who’s a Normal and who’s a Resonant.” Darl looked drained. “Don’t you yet understand that you can’t judge by your own moral code, that your code isn’t everyone’s?”

  Baz’s chair scraped as he meticulously set his glass on the desk, fought the urge to break Darl’s for sullying it. “No, but perhaps it should be. There are times when being impartial isn’t enough, Darl, when you have to be a partisan for a cause, when that cause is just.” He walked to the door, refused to look back. Ah, he’d misjudged, misjudged Darl all along while worshiping him. So wrong, and turbulence built inside him, destroying the walls of love he’d constructed around his hero, leaving him naked to the winds of change. At last he trusted himself enough to say as he left, “I wish you well, Darl, and pray the blinders drop from your eyes.”

  Hard to see through the haze of grief and burning hurt en-shrouding him, emotions almost palpable, craving release. Thankfully, the day’s business was almost over, the halls and waiting rooms practically empty, except for a bobtailed ghatta and a frizzy, red-haired fool stumping along on crutches. Baz’s momentum swept him into the cripple’s path and he crushed him in a bear hug to keep him upright. A reason to explode—the idiot’d walked right in his way—but he’d not prove Darl right. “My apologies, sir.” He strangled on the words, “Bazelon Foy regrets the inconvenience,” and made sure the man was steady before rushing on. Somehow he reached the doors without brushing against anyone else, giving him a reason to detonate, release the upheaval inside.

  Tadj was waiting patiently outside. “Did he listen to you?”

  “No.” His tone slashed at his assistant.

  But Tadj was familiar with his superior’s emotions. “Then we’ll have to give him a reason to believe, won’t we?”

  With short, panting breaths, Baz labored to control himself, but the litany running through his mind sang, “I’ll show him, I’ll show him—see how he likes it to be called a Resonant!” The need to hurt back for being hurt pounded in his veins, set his skin tingling. “Tadj,” he asked, nostrils flaring with the effort to draw air into his lungs, “how’d you like to write a letter for me? A very special letter.” Yes, let Darl experience the distress he’d caused him, wallow in the hurt of misjudged motives. Be misjudged, suffer as he’d caused Baz to suffer. Under most circumstances he’d prefer something shorter, quicker, more decisive, but this... just might be a fitting repayment for betrayal, for the destruction of love.

  Jenret Wycherley sprawled in an easy chair, wishing someone would order more cha. Anything to stimulate him after that harrowing all-night ride with Faertom from the Research Hospice. The detour to Hylan Crailford’s house and the ensuing arguments had given them a late start. Only his promise to Doyce had forced him on—and now this, this ridiculous delay in the Monitor’s office!

  How could they dawdle with everything so crystal-clear? His eyes felt gritty, permanently narrowed from squinting through the night, face raw from a gusting east wind that had almost propelled them sideways at times. His clothes, his crisp, black tunic and pantaloons plus the black sheepskin tabard, Lady bless, they should be line-hung and beaten for days before he even considered washing them. Dirt, untidiness set his teeth on edge, gave him something to concentrate on instead of what was—or wasn’t—happening around him. Best get used to dirt, a baby by its very nature was untidy, messy, leaky. And he smiled. From where he sat on the bench, Faertom didn’t look any better served than he, head lolling against the wall, eyes almost closed, the rest of him no more easeful than Jenret felt.

  What had possessed him to ride directly to the Monitor’s offices, rather than hurrying to Doyce? He’d pay for that, no doubt about it, until he convinced her of the importance of his news. There’d been no choice, the precedence clear in his mind. Except his mind wasn’t Doyce’s, and he had yet to truly ken how hers worked. He managed a dry, hard swallow. And still, and yet, the desire for more cha eclipsed every other worry and doubt, betrayed by bodily weakness. Parched, so thirsty he longed to stick the spout of the near-empty cha pot between his lips and pour the dregs down his throat. Obsessed by cha! With a groaning stir, Faertom stretched and gave him a wink. “If you don’t mind, sir,” he offered in the Monitor’s direction, “I’ll see if I can’t find a servant, have more cha brought up. We had a powerful dry ride.”

  “What? Oh.” The Monitor, Kyril van Beieven, scarcely stirred, eyes downcast, clasped hands resting on the desk in front of him, mired in deep thought. The other member of their early-morning foursome, Darl Allgood, one of the High Conciliators, shot a brisk, dismissive nod in Faertom’s direction and he slipped out.

  “Kyril.” Again Allgood tried, more insistent, “Kyril! If you’ve more questions for Wycherley and Faertom, ask them. Don’t sit there in a brown study. If not, dismiss them, let them eat breakfast and go to bed.” The unassuming man with his hairline fast creeping back on both sides of his forehead had a compelling voice, energizing Jenret, making him marshal his own exhausted thoughts. He’d not expected van Beieven to be up so early, the sun not even risen, let alone Allgood beside him, but the two had been working when they’d arrived. Perhaps they’d never even been to bed. By now the rising noises throughout the Monitor’s Hall indicated the morning had progressed, everyone else was up, starting their day. What was it about Allgood—nothing sinister, nothing like that, but something that left him supremely uneasy, as if secrets were stockpiled within, though he didn’t dare pry to loosen them.

  Rawn stretched fore and aft at his feet, a black lightning bolt on the carpet. “Don’t worry about Doyce.” Jenret jerked upright, his preoccupation with Allgood had driven Doyce from his mind. “I ’spoke Khar as soon as we were close enough for my mindvoice to reach. When she awakes, she’ll know you’re here. Khar wanted her to sleep as much as possible. She’s been restless lately, can’t get comfortable. She’ll be in the library when you’re free.”

  “Thank you, old ghatt. ” Grateful, Jenret rumpled Rawn’s ears and the black ghatt reciprocated by gnawing on his knuckles, bit down too hard. His “Ouch!” came out loud, sharper than he’d intended.

  “And that’s for thinking anything’s odd about Allgood. He’s fine, perfectly trustworthy. His difference is not your concern.”

  Jenret’s pained exclamation had roused the Monitor more effectively than Allgood’s entreaties. He sighed, leaned back to examine the ceiling; and Jenret was amazed at how much the Monitor had aged since spring. He’d always had the fine, crinkling lines around the eyes, from weather as much as from age, a legacy from his years of farming before he’d been elected Monitor. But now the blondish hair hung lifeless, the blue eyes faded, too old for a man in his late forties. He was well into the eighth and final year of his octad-long term, and not for the first time Jenret wondered who would win the next election. Many possible candidates had surfaced so far, but each represented a faction, a special interest, not a decisive majority.

  “So you and Arras Muscadeine are convinced this woman—this Hylan Crailford—is a threat?” A sidelong glance shared with Allgood. “I didn’t receive quite
the same impression from Faeralleyn Thomas. She worries him, clearly, and he fears her, but at least he acknowledges she’s only one woman. How much danger can one woman be?” Entreaty in the pallid blue eyes.

  Jenret whistled softly; he’d not reckoned on Faertom’s internal conflicts over spying on Hylan Crailford, or his degree of innocence. Faertom’s hesitant descriptions coupled with the Monitor’s desire for reassurance hadn’t bolstered Jenret’s more bleak assessment. For the first time, he cursed the fact that Arras Muscadeine hadn’t come with them, instead hastily penning a note for the Monitor before returning to his duties in Marchmont. Clearly the note hadn’t carried enough weight, either. But support came unexpectedly as Allgood responded to the Monitor before Jenret could explode with the righteous anger slowly building inside him.

  Perching on a corner of the Monitor’s desk, he laid a calming hand on van Beieven’s shoulder. Or a restraining hand—which? Jenret wondered. “Or sharing his courage,” suggested Rawn. “Governing is hard, lonely work.”

  “Hylan Crailford has the power of her convictions, and in someone like her, those beliefs sear, purify with an almost unholy sense of mission and virtue. I’ve encountered her kind before, though rarely. Depending on how she’s perceived by others, she could be ignored as a mad, holy fool or she could sweep people off their feet with the fervor of her convictions, an army of true believers trailing in her wake.” Somber, he looked from one to the other, inviting comment. With an effort, Jenret held his tongue, relieved that someone else recognized a viable threat and curious where Allgood headed.

  “She has the potential to destroy the Resonants, cause the land to rise up against them at terrible cost to both sides. But,” he continued heavily, and Jenret’s hopes crashed, “until she makes a move, leaves her little cottage, there’s nothing we can do.”

  “Nothing? Nothing we can do?” Jenret surged to his feet, hands splayed wide as if to coax them to his side. “Now’s the time to act, while we still have a chance, before she makes a move!”

  “And on what legal grounds, Jenret? As long as she stays to herself, she’s within her rights!” The Monitor had risen as well, the muscles on his neck corded with anger, the desk a frail barrier between contending wills. “If she chooses to travel, she’s within her rights, the right of any citizen to free movement. Doesn’t that mean anything to you—that right? All Resonants have that right as well, and will continue to have it while I govern! She has the right to talk with people, convince them of her beliefs—if they choose to be convinced. But unless—or until—she’s guilty of incitement, fomenting a rebellion, there is absolutely nothing that can be done! No law that she’s broken. Do you understand?” He sank behind his desk as Faertom returned with a large copper cha kettle, obviously purloined from the kitchen.

  Faertom’s stunned glance encompassed the passionate figures, although no words passed his quivering lips. Instinctively, he moved until Allgood shielded him from the tension thickening and clogging the room, as asphyxiating as smoke. Allgood gave him a gentle smack on the side, just as one might calm a spooked horse.

  “The Monitor’s right, Wycherley, and you know it. Those are the laws. Hylan Crailford’s but one problem—one of many—that we’re coping with right now regarding the Resonants. She’ll be watched as best we can.” The Monitor nodded emphatic support to Allgood’s statement. “But while you’ve been training at the Hospice, other problems have reared up as well.” Questing fingers again massaged the receding hairline, but only the fingers betrayed the man’s nervousness, his voice steady. “It seems more Resonants are anxious about our continued ability or commitment to protect them—”

  “With good reason!” Jenret broke in, lip curled, eyetooth exposed like a dog about to snap.

  But Allgood ignored the provocation. “And have left their homes, their livelihoods, and fled to the deep woods out of concern for their safety. Oddly enough, it’s not yet a mass exodus to Marchmont, where they might feel safe, welcome. Instead, they hide, although the Erakwa may have sheltered some. Insofar as we know, mindspeech has little or no effect on the Erakwa. Faertom,” he patted Faertom again, compassion muting his words, desperate to inform without frightening, “I don’t know if they sent word, conventionally or mentally, but your parents and brothers have left their island and their boat-building business and taken to the woods.”

  Faertom sank to his knees, hands covering his face, leaning against Allgood’s thigh, his shaggy mane of hair helping shadow his hurt from their view. Appalled, Jenret felt like a voyeur. This was reality, not an abstraction.

  Van Beieven picked up the conversation. “What that translates into, Wycherley—at least to some of our more credulous populace—is a panic that Resonants are secretly mustering their forces to attack the rest of us, just as the Fifty supposedly did some years ago.” Jenret looked blank at the reference, but the Monitor pressed on without explaining. “Now do you see why I can’t worry about one lone woman? If we don’t convince the Resonants to return home, to their lives here in Canderis, how can we persuade the Normal populace they bode no danger?”

  “Well, how do you propose to convince either side no danger exists?” Jenret paced, torn between a world he’d assumed he’d belonged to for so many years, and by a Resonant world he was just coming to understand and respect. Fulminating over the injustice of it all accomplished nothing, not given his hard-earned wisdom of the past year or so. Oh, not always wisdom enough, but more than he’d had before. Past time to lay aside the abrupt enthusiasms, the equally sharp angers. But his mental lecture couldn’t stopper his mouth. “Somebody, someone must reason with them, make them return, guarantee their protection until things settle down!”

  ‘Everyone present except Jenret Wycherley divined where his thoughts headed, and his heart as well, but the Monitor forestalled him before he could say it. “What you’re about to blurt out is ill-advised but well-intentioned, Wycherley. Yes, we desperately need volunteers to search out our wandering Resonants, return them to the fold. But you have a double duty here: you’re a Seeker Veritas as well as a Resonant. Before you jump to volunteer, think about it, think it through, talk it over with people.” A certain heavy emphasis, “And most especially with your wife-to-be, Doyce Marbon, since she is carrying your child, or had you momentarily forgotten that.”

  It stopped Jenret cold. “Thank you for that reminder. You’re right, I’ll think on it. And on a number of other things as well.” A savage, precise bow indicated the depth of his turmoil, his anxiety to leave the Monitor’s presence, and he was already out the door before permission was granted.

  Faertom heaved himself to his feet, face expressionless, fears banked within like coals. Loyalty counted, and loyalty to Jenret Wycherley was his only claim since his family had fled and Allgood continued to deny him. “They’ll be all right, lad,” Allgood whispered, “your family will be fine.”

  He nodded once, blindly, at Allgood and in the Monitor’s general direction and bumbled toward the door. Despite his own pain, he hurt for Allgood even more. When would the man ever acknowledge who and what he was? Admit he was Resonant as well as High Conciliator. How could he be so craven, remain silent about his own abilities when it might help?

  “Because it’s too late to acknowledge the truth, Faertom, ” Allgood’s sorrow reached his brain. “Don’t you know what the Monitor would think, what everyone would think? I’d be seen as a ‘plant,’ some sort of spy. That I’ve been here all along, advising the Monitor, cajoling the other Conciliators to my views. I have more use as I am, as a Nothing, a Normal, than I do by admitting what I am. ”

  “It’s not true, and you know it!” Faertom shot back. “It can’t be true! and as he stumbled into the hall, the black ghatt Rawn was waiting for him. “It can’t be true, can it?” he begged for reassurance, but the ghatt, as usual, remained silent to his pleas. He always listened, though, Faertom was sure of that.

  “Break!” The shout sank from topside, the “k” sound bouncing b
etween the rock walls like a stubborn stutter, “k-k-k-k.” Somerset Garvey nodded, waved so the distant figure on the quarry’s lip would know he’d heard. But before taking his break, Garvey rechecked the ropes and harness on the granite slab, far bigger than a double bed. Satisfied, he retrieved his lunch bucket, glad again he’d brought it with him, not left it topside. One of the few good things that could be said for Polter was that his wife packed a hearty lunch. Yawning, eyelids heavy—too early to be so sleepy—he misjudged, tripped in the runoff channel carved near the wall and wrapped in the same shadows that cooled the lunch bucket and the stoneware water bottle. A menace, bleeding ankle-turner, the damn thing was. Polter had more trouble with standing water after snow or rain than did most quarry owners; to rectify it, he’d cut drainage ditches on each level of his workings, slanting downslope to carry the water to the bottom, thirty meters below. Garvey scooped a granite chip, tossed it and counted, waiting for the distant splash below. Groundwater seepage plus runoff, that.

  No reason to climb up and socialize with Polter and his sons, all of them packed with muscle instead of brains between their ears. Almost impossible to tell the sons apart without numbering them. Usually he didn’t worry, brawny they might be but thought themselves too good for honest labor—that’s what hirelings were for. Garvey waved genially again, an exaggerated arm sweep as if to invite them to his level. No enjoyment working Polter’s quarry, but money talked and they’d begged his help for this final order for the season. Didn’t follow he had to fraternize with them, didn’t much care for jaw-flapping. Still, being a good, though distant neighbor was the price you paid to be left in peace at your own little quarry most times. Nobody asked his help overmuch, but when they did, he didn’t begrudge it.