by Gayle Greeno
“Well, you’ve adapted without advanced technology. When needs must do, you have.” Saam licked vigorously at a hind foot. “Who but a resourceful eumedico would cobble a centrifuge from a potter’s wheel? Hardly high tech, but it works, as you always say.”
“Fine, except that eumedico trainees can’t resist throwing a pot on it at some point. Hardly sanitary conditions.”
She edged deeper down the aisle, elbows tight to her sides, afraid to brush anything, break it. Strangely, she felt swept up by the open potentialities of childhood again, a cornucopia of toys spilling at her feet, their myriad possibilities, and she deliciously hesitant over which one to play with first. Everything beckoned invitingly, cogs and gears, pistons, tubing, armatures, belts and wheels, aching to be touched, brought back to life. What did this one do—or that one? What might she achieve with some additional tinkering and the imagination to see beyond the obvious, chart a new direction?
Didn’t that crank just cry out to be turned, she temporized, her search for the valise long forgotten. Fingers protested, cramping around the wooden handgrip, but curiosity overwhelmed the pain. Strange, those two metallic balls on their posts, what relationship did they have to the crank at the base? Those two cobwebbed glass plates mounted vertically? Rrmmm! Rrmmm! RrrrRrmmmm! The device spun to life, a hibernating beast awakening and stretching, and blue sparks arched and surged between the balls, snapping and popping like miniature lightning bolts. The downy hair on the back of her arms began to rise, tingling. RrrrRrmmm!
“Ma‘am, Eumedico Annendahl, ma’am,” Mr. Farnham, one of the resident Resonants, aged and broken beyond his years, legacy of Vesey’s and Evelien’s reign at the Research Hospice, sidled into the storeroom. “They said I should help....”
“What?” She cranked harder, refusing to let the blue sparks flicker and die, refusing to notice Saam’s fur crackling, rippling in different directions. Yellow eyes wide, the ghatt looked like he was about to say something, urge her to stop, and she reached her free hand to forestall him. Before she could touch him, a spark sprang from her hand to his nose. He leaped as if stung, nearly fell off the bench.
“Raow! Yerow!” Saam screamed aloud. But Mr. Farnham’s response was even more astounding. His toothless mouth gaped, jaw sagging, and he clapped hands to his temples, rubbing as if at an itch burrowed deep inside his skull, eyes rolling back as he sank to his knees. Bewildered, she analyzed each movement, wondering what it meant. Despite everything, Farnham didn’t appear to be in pain, rather an intense ecstasy, a pleasurable arousal.
Her arm flagged as she stared at him, the circling movements slowing, the sparks between the balls fading, finally dissipating, leaving a pungent smell to the room, fresh and sharp. Electrical storms left the same smell.
“Mr. Farnham, are you all right?” A wave of anxiety overcame her as she rushed to his side, checked his pulse, rolled back an eyelid. He heaved a repleted sigh, tried to gather himself together. It made no sense, she’d experienced no similar reaction, just the staticky tension of the air whip-snapping between her and Saam.
One hand on the floor to steady himself, he managed to rise, brushing off the knees of his trousers, straightening and retucking his shirt. A slow, almost flirtatious wink in her direction gave her an urge to slap him. “Bottle it up like that and it feels so good when it lets loose again.” Another heavy sigh of satisfaction. “So good, makes you feel you’re alive, able to think.”
“What?” She still had no idea what he meant.
Saam pushed between them, eyes ablaze. “Don’t ever do that again when I’m here. It freezes my mindspeech so I can’t communicate. Tried to warn you, but wasn’t fast enough. Worse than the Seeker General’s private office.”
“What?” Her conversation was taking very unoriginal turns, utterly baffled by each revelation, puzzle pieces aplenty but without an inkling where they fit.
“Look what it did to Farnham here, though I’m not entirely sure what it did. He seemed to enjoy it, but then Resonant brain waves aren’t the same as ours.”
“Sorry, Saam, ” she apologized automatically, mind sprinting in a hundred different directions. “Mr. Farnham, do you think you could carry that gadget upstairs for me?” and tripped over the valise when she least expected it, didn’t care, scooped it up by its handles, more concerned with the strange machine she’d discovered, its peculiar effect. “Don’t drop it, Mr. Farnham,” she begged. “If it’s too much, we’ll get someone else to help you.”
“Nay, ’tis fine. Just awkward, not heavy.” He huffed and puffed, trying to see over or around it, judge his footing, shift clear without sweeping other mechanicals off tables and shelves. “Mayhap you’ll do me again?” his face hopeful.
“Mayhap, mayhap,” she responded, mind desperately working as they climbed the stairs. “Saam, would you send word that we will be accepting the Monitor’s ‘invitation’ after all, but a day or two later than expected. I think I’m onto something! ”
That sharing of minds left the steel-gray ghatt singularly unenthusiastic about the possibilities.
“Baz! Baz, I’ve some special orders from the north, more than anticipated!” Waving his notebook, Tadjeus Pomerol barged into Baz’s office, his inner sanctum, dirt-stained and triumphant.
Bazelon Foy repressed a fastidious shudder at his journeyman’s disarray, evidence that the man had ridden long and sleepless, if he rightly judged the puffy lids, the purplish circles under the blue eyes. Not nearly as battered, disheveled, and dispirited as the first time he’d encountered Tadj two years’ past, a definite improvement, actually.
He sat the man down, forced himself to touch the blond hair, road dust adhering to the scented pomade, traced the curve of the pink and white ear with a finger, tried not to notice the smudge he picked up from it. “So, your work went well?” Checked to be sure his office door was shut tight, came back and skimmed through the orders, then studied them more attentively, mouth parting as he relaxed. Business and business, best know how business fared, pass the orders on along, get the apprentices and masters working. Besides, it gave Tadj a chance to catch his breath. “Go wash while I’m reading.” He motioned to the ewer and pitcher, his own private one, on the stand against the far wall. He loved the curves of the white porcelain against the mahogany paneling, saw Tadj struck speechless by the contrast as well.
He sighed. Tadj had an incredible—and innate—sense of beauty and absolutely no ability to create it. But he was a superlative salesman, his task a hundredfold easier given the growing renown of the Foy glassworks. Yes, an especially large order for decanters and glasses. Nice, very nice. An especially lucrative and artistically challenging order for one of Baz’s unique handblown creations, the rest for cut-glass and molded. And of course the ubiquitous orders for bottles, jars, molded drinking glasses, tankards. Poor Tadj as well, to have to deal with such mundane objects.
He’d found Tadj in a back alley behind one of Wexler’s wine shops, crying, sniveling, ineffectually struggling as four sailors attempted to turn him into custard. Pettibal sailors, he was fairly sure, not the lake-traffickers here in Wexler. Must have been traveling overland from the Pettibal to the coast to sign on for ocean trade. Baz wasn’t sure what had started the fight, but he had a pretty good idea, with the emphasis on “pretty.” Because that’s what Tadj was—somehow just a little too handsome, not quite effeminate, but someone who shouldn’t sit too near real masculinity. His clothes and his color sense were just a tad precious, although Baz learned later that Tadj had clerked for an upscale tailor in Eremont who demanded that his help serve as walking mannikins for the latest fashions. What the sailors had thought Tadj wanted of them hadn’t been sex, because Tadj didn’t realize it himself, but the opportunity to bask beside hard-bitten masculine attractiveness.
Rescuing the lad had been a chore, and he’d shown the sailors that not all fetchingly handsome men, including himself, thought or fought that way. He’d been bruised and bloodied by the time he’d fought
them off, and Tadj had been unconscious. Easy enough when Tadj came to, full of gratitude, balmed by Baz’s good looks, to insinuate that the sailors had been Gleaners, had wiped Tadj’s brain until he couldn’t remember the evening or its aftermath. Easy enough too, to discover Tadj’s skills, his golden tongue for sales, his infallible eye for beauty. Tadj was pliant and pliable in the face of beauty—inanimate or animate, male or female—would sell his soul for it. Why shouldn’t Baz be the buyer? Tadj also lusted after the comely attractions of Baz’s precision plans to rid the world of Gleaners to get back at those sailors who’d so nearly marred his looks.
Glowingly clean, face and hands at least, even the blond hair reslicked, Tadj sat, hands folded, face eager. “And what of our other business?” Baz finally asked when he’d determined Tadj was about to burst. “Any luck there?”
“Some. Some,” Tadj drew it out, reluctant yet excited. “Not as much as I’d anticipated, because someone was there before me.”
“Before you?” It made no sense. Tadj had been assigned the north, had one of his other followers mistaken his instructions? Or was someone else poaching, drawing off the support he needed for the cause, channeling it to something else? Nothing could be more important. “What do you mean?”
Tadj bounced in his seat. “I think it’s someone special, Baz. Someone we can mold. A visible figurehead we can use to rally people without exposing ourselves any more than necessary.” He sounded almost breathless with excitement. “Plus, she has a talent we can only dream about!”
He was seething now, almost ready to slap Tadj, force him to make sense. Was Tadj’s eye for talent as discerning as his eye for beauty? He was trying to help, Baz kept reminding himself, make Baz proud of him—just as Baz had wanted to make Darl proud of him. He suppressed his frustration, his failure. No, Tadj might disappoint him, but he’d never disappoint Tadj. “What do you mean?” he repeated again, spacing the words with even emphasis.
“She can ...” Tadj caught Baz’s raised eyebrows, back-tracked. “A woman named Hylan Crailford. She can identify Gleaners! They project some sort of vibration she can feel, just as a dowser looks for water. Except her dowsing rod responds to Gleaners!” He’d V-ed his hands in front of him horizontally, demonstrating, homing in on an invisible target.
“Have you actually seen her do this?” If this were another of Tadj’s odd enthusiasms, he’d have him pumping the bellows in the glassworks for the rest of his life. Let him find beauty in that!
Tadj nodded, solemn. “Saw her. Wasn’t supposed to, but I did. The woman I was selling to that day took me along to a naming day celebration she’d been invited to. I saw Hylan Crailford in action, though I wasn’t meant to—saw the rod bend and leap in her hands!”
“Did she see you?”
“Yes and no.” Tadj considered, trying to explain. “She saw me as much as she ‘saw’ any stranger that night, took no notice of me because I wasn’t what she was searching for. I’ve seen her since, talked with her, but haven’t admitted I was there. I’ve seen her do it twice again. She doesn’t kill them, leaves that for others to do. Her only role, she says, is to identify them.”
Baz found himself pacing the narrow office, mind crammed with possibilities—if Tadj weren’t exaggerating. But if he weren’t, they’d been handed a priceless gift—a mind attuned to their own desires to rid the world of Gleaners. Yes, the harvest was plenteous, but the laborers were few. Let her identify them and they, they would be the ruthless arm that would harvest them. “What sort of person is she?”
“Strange, passing strange,” Tadj admitted. “For some reason she’s worried about Spacers, fears they’ll return to Methuen after all these years, inundate us with technology as destructive as the Plumbs. She thinks the Gleaners will call to them mind-to-mind, direct them here. Totally convinced of it.”
“Sounds like an old-fashioned, revivalist upbringing. That Spacer malarky won’t help, but her hatred of Gleaners will.” He’d come to a stop now, ignoring Tadj. “That’s what we must play on.”
“She’s got a Shepherd and a ghatt with her as well. Following her along meek as lambs.”
“What! What’s a Shepherd doing with a ghatt?” That tore it right there. What if Tadj had been found out—and through Tadj, himself? “Have they been doing any Seekings?”
“Not likely!” Tadj laughed, sharp face shiny with delight. “She’s got them drugged. Resourceful woman, to say the least. She thinks they may be the sacrifice necessary to stop the Spacers from returning. Why not, if it makes her happy? Who am I to say? She’s a holy fool in the grip of her passion, to save the world from the Spacers. Luckily for us she has to destroy Gleaners to accomplish it.”
“Is she with anyone we can trust now?”
“She’s already attracted believers, or at least they believe she can identify Gleaners. I’ve got two of our people mingling with her followers, but nobody knows our two for what they are, as yet.”
Was it too good to be true? Too much to believe that Hylan Crailford had been given into their hands? Well, the only thing to do was to wait and see. He sat opposite Tadj, let their knees almost touch, leaned forward to whisper, though it wasn’t really necessary. “Play with her if you like, see what develops, what you can develop. Manipulate and mold her, just as I mold glass. It’s your opportunity to create a thing of beauty to enhance our cause.” Tadj nodded, lips pressed tight in excitement, watching Baz’s cherry-pink lips form the words. “But be careful. I don’t want to jeopardize what we already have. I’ll not have my people torn between me and her. See how much farther you can insinuate yourself with her, into her group.
“Keep order for her. Guide her. Give order to her cause and her followers will look to you for direction. Do you think you can do that?”
Tadj’s head bobbed eagerly. “Yes, oh, yes!” He leaned back, momentarily disconcerted, a moue of distress on his face. “I just wish she weren’t so ordinary, almost ugly-looking. Woman hasn’t taken care of herself for years. And I think the dog has fleas.”
“A dog, a ghatt, a Shepherd—what do you have there? A menagerie?” He laughed. “Any dancing bears?”
“Oh, I think the Shepherd can serve for that.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Get back there. Remember her true beauty is in her utility to our cause. Let me know what happens.”
Doyce sulked, straightened her legs against the surrey’s dashboard until her seat back protested, furiously finger-tapping in time to the horses’ hooves. Davvy galloped Lokka in a loop around the surrey, Khar on the pommel platform, angled along Lokka’s neck to catch the breeze. And she wasn’t supposed to ride! Lokka boasted a perfectly smooth gait when she wasn’t playing hellion under Davvy’s tutelage. Of course, riding the whole way wouldn’t be comfortable, but a short ride would be beneficial, make her feel in control of her fate. Cady Brandt, the Novie Seeker handling the reins, had already refused her a turn at handling the carriage horses. Said she’d been instructed to convey Doyce there safe and sound! Doyce drummed her fingers faster. Was the whole world conspiring against her having any fun, any distraction to take her mind off her conflicted decision to return home to her mother and sister? Blast Swan for playing on her guilt!
Cady’s Bondmate F’een fixed her with an expectant stare, more than a little awestruck—as was the girl, if Doyce chose to admit it. This was not going to be a pleasant journey! Irritable, she shifted, scooted down in the seat, and tossed one ankle over the other. Nothing was comfortable, let alone her bottom, and she stifled a groan of frustrated boredom.
The surrey slowed, Cady heaving on the reins, casting a wary glance at Doyce’s mounded abdomen. “Are you ... all right, ma’am, Seeker Marbon?” The girl’s eyes looked like a scolded puppy’s. “You’re not ... going into labor or anything belike that?”
“No, Cady. Trust me, I’d be the first to notice. Not you.” She pushed upright, attempted to muster some charity in her heart. Well, if it were better to give than to receive, why not s
ee how Cady did with that? “Your arm must be hurting.” Caught the girl’s reluctant nod; Cady’d been wounded protecting Maize and Max Lewinton from the Reapers. “Best not to aggravate it. Why not let me take over for a stretch? I’ve handled a team before.”
“But not in a long time,” Khar taunted as she and Davvy whooped by. “Any team your mother owned was so old and well-broken that a Plumb exploding underfoot wouldn’t have made them amble.”
“How would you know?” Cross, she fanned a hand to shift the rising dust.
“Saw it in your mind. May have been high adventure to you when you were little. But think on it, would your mother have let you drive otherwise?”
“No.” Realized that to Cady she’d answered her own question about relinquishing the reins. Davvy pulled Lokka parallel to the surrey and wobbled as he stood on the saddle, Lokka obediently slowing when his aerial acrobatics commenced. Khar glared at the boy towering above her, arms winging the air for balance, mouth screwed tight with concentration. He took a step to compensate, stabilize himself, and his foot slammed on the platform, grinding Khar’s white paw.
With a screech, Khar levitated skyward and, as the sorrel mare moved beneath her, landed in Davvy’s flailing arms. The outcome preordained, they both crashed to the ground, Lokka dashing to safety beside Doyce and the team. “I don’t blame you, old dear, ” she commiserated as Cady halted the surrey, she and F’een darting down to assess the damage. “Khar, how are you? How’s Davvy?”