‘Let’s consider this in perspective,’ Pir replied mildly. The pirates, and their ilk, throughout the past, were robbing goods we wanted in trade, ruining markets of ours – and would doubtless have gotten cocky enough to raid our shores too. Skyholm was no more altruistic than governments usually are.’ He lifted a forefinger. ‘True, the Concord of Guernsey guarantees free entry into the countries of southern Angleylann, to persons of the Domain on legitimate business. However, Devon is a hierocratic state. Its Bishop decided, not quite wrongly, that Gaeanity will undermine its church and faith. Therefore, he says, the business of our missionaries is not legitimate. Well, is this worth fighting a war over? Why not concentrate on making converts closer to home, ucheny?’
‘Who spoke about war?’Jovain said. ‘Economic sanctions –’
‘Oh, no,’ Pir answered, his voice grown softer still. ‘No, not that, sir, my friend. Your promise to the neo-isolationists, that you’ll restrict foreign trade, has many of us adequately unhappy. We’ll be striving to get that program put on the shelf. But at worst, trade with, say, the Maurai has not reached a large volume. Trade across the Channel is a different matter. An embargo would do grave damage to me and everybody like me.’ His gaze sought Jovain’s and held fast. ‘The Captain cannot wish to hurt his supporters, can he?’
How cold the air feels. Imagination only, but I shiver.
‘I wasn’t talking about a war, either,’ Mattas grumbled. ‘Firm diplomacy, an ultimatum if need be, mobilization on our side, those should turn the trick.’
Pir smiled. ‘Ah, yes. And out of the crisis, we should get further commercial concessions. Please recall what I said. The business is nothing to take very seriously in itself. That does not mean we can’t make a fulcrum of it.’
They gave him sharp looks. ‘As a single important instance,’ he explained, ‘think of our military professionals. They don’t like the idea of rapprochement with the old enemy, Espayn. Far less do they like the idea of their own reduction, their eventual replacement by men whom Skyholm recruits directly. Yes, up in my Alps I too have heard complaints that approach the mutinous. Mobilization will give the cadre something to do, something which you control, Captain.’
‘I … was … thinking… along those lines,’Jovain admitted.
– Hours later, he stood by himself. His back was bent, his hands clasped behind it. He stared at the time-browned paper whereon was the Declaration of Tours, scarcely seeing, while the words throbbed below his mind. ‘– the causes of peace, order, justice, and ultimate reunion –’
I, having lived through war, am a man of peace. But if I threaten war, and am defied, I shall have to wage it. Why? How did all this happen? What has gone wrong?
He squared his shoulders. Pain and death were among the workings of the Life Force, which he served. Let him never forget.
The clock said that Uropa had rolled from the short day of this season into the long night. He should seek home, to his apartment, to Faylis. Maybe he could draw strength from her. Likelier, she would want if from him, comfort, consolation, hope. Well, at least she had stopped complaining about the irregular hours he kept.
2
Terai saw the village at a distance, by the glow of its windows through dusk, and forgot weariness as he hastened his stride. He had known it was there, a fisher community at the head of a fjord; the Injuns whom he encountered earlier had told him. They also gave him shelter, food, clothes, but after a single night he declined further hospitality. The news he bore could not wait.
Besides, he fled from a sense of guilt. The Northwest Union was their country too.
He must serve his own, and mankind as a whole, and the living planet.
Meadows reached dim around him. The graveled road whispered beneath his moccasins. As yet, chill had not turned to cold, but it would before long, for the sky was clear and the Injuns had remarked that this day which was ending was the first of winter. Stars blinked forth in a purple that rapidly deepened to black. Somewhere a dog howled.
The road bent down toward a gleam of water, and heights cut off most of what light remained. Terai could just make out the radio antenna above one building, which he supposed was the hall of whatever Lodge had a chapter here. Its leanness and guy wires made a mast of it, on a ship bound among the stars to an unknown port. Orion stood huge behind.
Terai groped through rutted streets to that goal. He met nobody. Folk were indoors, mostly at table. He glimpsed them there, husband, wife, children, perhaps a parent or two dwelling under the same roof or a friend come to visit. The scenes were infinitely comfortable and cheerful, and infinitely remote from him.
The house he sought was the largest in town, as suited a meeting place, but of the same timber and shakes as the rest. Its door was unlocked. Terai decided he had better use the knocker regardless, for luminance at the rear showed someone was present, doubtless a caretaker who got an apartment in exchange for part-time services. The wood banged hollowly.
After a while the door swung aside. A middle-aged man confronted Terai. The candle that he held in a stick showed him gnarled but powerfully muscled from a lifetime’s toil. He peered at the big newcomer in the ill-fitting garments. ‘Who are you and what d’you want?’ he asked at last. Suspicion of strangers was not normal in these backwoods.
But I am Maurai, Terai thought. He can see that.
Aloud: ‘Good evening, sir. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I have an urgent call to make, to Vittohrya.’
‘Um,’ said the caretaker sourly. ‘Let’s hear your name and errand.’
‘Look, I was shipwrecked, made my way overland till yesterday, when I came on a tribe who took me in and directed me here. I only want to call my company to explain what happened. They’ll arrange transportation for me.’
‘What office would be open this late, and on a holiday? I wonder –’ The enmity became naked. The man’s free hand dropped to a sheath knife at his belt. ‘Let’s just go see Ola Noren, you and me. He’s the mayor, and he’s more in touch with outside than the rest of us.’
Perhaps Terai should have agreed. The chances were that his story would be accepted. But he had come too near disaster too many times on his trek; ‘chance’ was to him almost a dirty word. Unobtrusively, he assumed a judo posture, muscles relaxed, senses alert, organism ready. ‘I’ll be glad to pay my respects to your mayor after I’ve made my call,’ he said. ‘Now, if you please, I’ll do that.’
‘I don’t please!’ The knife flashed forth. ‘We’ve had our bellies full of your sort snooping around, aye, even here. Whatever you’re after, be damned to you. Come along.’
There was a flurry of action, an impact, a thud. Terai scooped the knife off the porch, looked at the man who gasped on the boards, and murmured, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want this and I mean you no harm. But you’ll follow my orders, understand?’
The caretaker crawled erect, retrieved his taper, relit it, and shambled ahead, across a dark lobby and down a dark corridor. Another candle glimmered. Behind it came a woman, stout, her fingers made grotesque by arthritis and her teeth obviously false, a sight all but unknown in Oceania. ‘Bob?’ she called. ‘Bob, dear, what’s the matter – Oh!’ She halted, agape, aghast.
‘Don’t be afraid, mizza,’ said Terai patiently. ‘Your husband is okay. He was a little unreasonable about letting me send a message, and I’ll have to keep him for a hostage till my mates arrive, but that should be pretty soon. If you go out, please tell your neighbors not to make trouble. Afterward I’ll try to arrange a compensation payment for you good folk.’
‘You … do like he wants, Mara,’ the caretaker mumbled.
She departed, trembling, trying not to sob. Terai set him in a chair, closed the door of the radio room, and leaned above the transmitter. ‘You may be a castaway,’ the Norrman said, ‘but you’re no common sailor.
‘Navy,’ Terai answered. ‘I hoped not to provoke a hostile reaction, but it seems I got one anyhow.’
‘Well, why are you M
aurai pouring men into our country? We hear from the Straits towns –’
Terai hushed him and completed his connection. The rating on night duty in Vittohrya called her officer. Terai would have preferred reporting to someone superior, but a courier would take a while to bring such a person, and by then this village would be in turmoil. He trusted the agitation would remain under control – a jeering mob outside the hall, indignant spokesmen coming in –but that was another risk he dared not take. ‘Listen carefully, Ensign,’ he said in his own language, ‘and pass my message on to Captain Kurawa. Nobody else not a word, do you hear me?’
When he was through, the reply stammered, ‘Yes, sir, yes, sir. We can get a VTOL craft there inside an hour, with a squad aboard, to fetch you. Will that do?’
‘I think so. It will have to.’
‘Do you need, want, something special, sir?’
‘Well –’ Terai indulged in a smile. ‘You might send a bottle of rum along. And after you’ve dispatched that runner to Captain Kurawa, maybe you can set a business in motion for me.’
‘Anything we can do, sir! Tanaroa, what this means –’
‘Nothing large. A message to N’Zealann, concerning arrangements for me to talk with my wife at home.’
3
The chamber wherein Arnec IV, Mestromor of western Brezh, had assembled his guests was high in his palace, overlooking much of Kemper. Standing at a window, you saw roofs whitened by a recent snowfall, the two streams flint-gray, hulls and masts along the waterfront, cathedral spires in silhouette against an overcast that veiled the heights beyond. Where streets were narrow, night was seeping upward. Lanterns glowed there, ruby, sapphire, emerald, amber, but as subdued this year as the holidays they lit. Cold breathed from the panes.
Nor did lamps and hearthfire seem to lift gloom inside entirely. Perhaps wainscots, carpet, heavy old furniture were too dark, ancestral faces too forbidding in their frames. Or perhaps the shadow was in the people themselves. They numbered a score, mostly men, mostly middle-aged, divided between Aerogens and prominent groundlings. All were richly clad for this occasion, but all the hues were somber, aside from a short red mantle that Vosmaer Tess Rayman kept about her shoulders. Wine and hors d’oeuvres stood on a sideboard, but everyone partook only slightly, absent-mindedly. They circulated as small, interchanging groups and spoke low.
At length Arnec raised his voice, in accented Francy: ‘My ladies, my sirs, please be seated.’ When they had found places around the central table, he stood at its head and lifted his hands for silence. He was no impressive figure, being short, stooped, white and sparse of hair, with spectacles always about to slide off his nose. A scholar whose work on the post-Judgment evolution of the Celtic languages was considered definitive, he had seldom taken a more active role in politics than was required by the position he had inherited. On that very account, his invitations drew heed when his messengers delivered them person to person – especially since they pointed out that agents of the Terran Guard were paying no particular attention to what went on around his professorish self.
‘You know in a general way why we are here.’ He might have been lecturing at a Consvatoire. ‘It will be for you to clarify that purpose, in the next several days, and decide what shall be done. I am not a man of action. At most, I can see when action may be indicated. However, I suggest we begin by an informal exchange of ideas, at once. Thereafter we can go downstairs without too many unspoken thoughts gnawing at us, and enjoy the first supper of those festivities that are our announced reason for coming together.’ He settled into his chair.
Silence prevailed for a space. It was not that these individuals did not know each other. Members of leadership classes normally do. Rather, it was as if nobody wished to speak out, lest that make every restraint crumble.
Talence Hald Tireur, who had traveled the farthest, broke through: ‘The question is simple. How much more outrage are we going to tolerate from that usurper?’
‘Hold, hold,’ said Dykenskyt Zhan Hannes in some alarm. ‘I realize you at Beynac have a special grievance –’
‘Not only us. Ask anywhere in Dordoyn. We could not have turned Jovain’s appointed lackey away if we didn’t have the whole country behind us.’
‘But outright rebellion –’
‘I am not talking about that, sir. I am talking about a convention of the Clan Seniors, to vote Jovain out of office.’
Lundgard Simo Ayson thumped the table. ‘Will the swine allow a convention to meet? Will he obey if it does? He has Skyholm.’
Vosmaer Tess Rayman gave him a look partly cynical, partly compassionate. After all, he was a cousin of Jovain’s cast-off wife, Irmali. ‘He does not necessarily have the military,’ she said. ‘In fact, isn’t that what this meeting is about?’
Arnec’s colleague, Sozen III, Mestrogoat of eastern Brezh, shook his troubled head. ‘Not so, Colonel,’ he replied. ‘The problem goes deeper. I listen to my commoners. Bad enough that Ileduciel means to support a cause away off in Angleylann that they see as pagan, subversive of rightness. They can suffer it as a move in a political game they have never wanted or pretended to understand. But an impeachment – the saints falling out among each other – that would shake them to the heart. They would ask why Ar-Goat should stay in the Domain.’
‘Unless they had an acceptable successor, someone who ought to have been Captain after Toma,’ said Kroneberg Stef Lanier excitedly; and he was the brother of Rosenn, who was the foster mother of Talence Iern Ferlay. ‘Wherever he is – Or if he’s dead, as seems too likely, well, then, won’t your pysans agree to punishing his murderers and installing a righteous new Captain?’
‘Who should that person be?’ Dykenskyt Zhan Hannes gave Talence Hald Tireur a dour glance. ‘We’re seeing what amounts to mutiny, if not outright secession … thus far.’ In haste: ‘Mind you, I agree we should not allow the mobilization to occur. We need a united front to get that order countermanded. But neither can we let regionalism get out of hand.’
A portly groundling, who was a well-traveled merchant prince, rumbled: ‘I’m naturally concerned about a disruption of trade, but believe me, I’m more concerned about the possible disruption of the Domain. Can the military cadre refuse to assemble their units and meet “if negotiations fail,” as I understand the order says? If they do, isn’t that the true rebellion?’
‘Maybe things won’t go so far,’ suggested the Grand Mayor of Elsass. Her tone was more wistful than hopeful. ‘Maybe our best course at present is simply to temporize, do nothing.’
Vosmaer Tess Rayman cleared her throat. ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ she answered. ‘You see, matters are already in train. We’re already being used, as a menace to Devon. If we acquiesce – Well, but let’s think a minute. Who are “we”? Of course, I can’t speak for every soldier, sailor, and flyer, but I know that they are not a few who’d rally around for a curbing of the Captaincy. We are the professionals, the skeleton and minimal muscle of the services. We depend on our reservists for the real flesh, when they’re called up in an emergency. Now, they’re not many either; the Domain hasn’t faced a serious threat for centuries. And they have their homeland ties and loyalties, the same as most of the cadre do. And they’re not stupid.’
She looked around the table. ‘It seems plain to me,’ she said, ‘Jovain is less interested in protecting a handful of Gaean preachers – less interested in “the sanctity of treaties,” however many words he issues about how our commerce and safety depend on it – less in any of that, than in providing a diversion. Bring the services, the men and women trained in fighting, together. If he can send them off on a foreign adventure, fine. If not, at least they’ll be assembled, vulnerable to Skyholm – not scattered among their folk, potential nuclei of guerrilla bands. Meanwhile, his Terran Guard and political agents will tighten his hold on civilians everywhere.’
‘How long can he maintain such an obviously unstable situation?’ Arnec inquired.
Tess shrugged. ‘Until he c
an think of the next thing to do, sir. I’d say he’s as off balance as we are. I’d also say we should find a balance ourselves, soon. Take a firm stance. We’ll have legal and historical precedents, the ancient rights of the states and their peoples.’
‘He has popular support of his own, especially in the South,’ Sozen warned. ‘Remember, he claims to be restoring and protecting traditional ways. Those are not so much the traditional ways of Brezh or of most of our lands – but –’ He hesitated before speaking it: ‘Civil war? Not overnight, not for years, but eventually?’
‘Impossible,’ growled Lundgard Simo Ayson. ‘That’s part of our problem. He controls Skyholm.’
Talence Elsabet Ormun spoke softly. She was a young woman,
from a minor family in the Caiptain’s Clan, invited on her kinsman Bram Gunhouse’s recommendation because she was a technician in the aerostat. ‘He … he need not control it always,’ she said.
4
Snow had fallen heavily a few days before and was imminent again. Thus moisture in the air made the earth a gift of warmth. Vanna Uangovna could walk in the Library garden wearing simply a robe and boots.
She was alone. The twelve days of Solstice were not over, and most folk were celebrating – at home, among friends, in regimental ceremonies – quietly., noisily, desperately, however their moods were after the news that had come.
Vanna’s was … elegiac, she supposed. She did not share the common belief in astrology and cycles; Gaea’s embracing dance with planets and stars was subtler than that, and ultimately stronger. Yet she could not help feeling it appropriate that this interval, when debts were paid, ushered in the Year of the Rattlesnake. Destruction, decay, millennial winter sleep, and renewal – but what was the life like, that flowed through time toward the hour of its birth? Would it remember her schoolchildren?
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