by Patty Jansen
The signs were bad, and the doga was wracked with indecision and paralysed by a body of senators who didn’t like to hear bad news and were all too happy with Alius’ strange don’t worry message. If there was a new medicine, Alius had better turn up with it soon, or he was going to evacuate. In fact, he scribbled a note which he asked Orsan to take to the stationmaster, to send any free trains to Fairlight for evacuation, his lack of funds be damned.
Folding the note, Sady rose, and as he pushed his chair back under the table, he made a decision. He owed Viki and Shara. He owed his long-dead parents; he owed Milleus. He owed Suri and her sons, and the love he had never been able to give her. He owed this city. For years, his family, friends and colleagues had taken the burden of looking after the country. It was his turn. It might destroy or kill him, but he was going to challenge.
Chapter 10
* * *
MILLEUS SHIFTED the van into “brake” and it rolled to a stop just before it hit the fence. A cloud of steam burst from the pressure vent in an angry hiss. He flung the door open, dropped out of the van and slammed the door after him, as if it was to blame for his mood.
Mercy, mercy on his brother if ever he got his hands on the blabbermouth.
In his mind, he could still see the town’s shopkeeper’s smiling face, hear his voice, So it is true, then, you will be standing as Proctor?
He had wanted to wring the man’s neck, wanted to shout, Who in the blazing wastelands has told you such nonsense?
But two of the man’s customers had been standing in the corner of the shop, wide-eyed. Next thing the whole town would be talking about him returning to the doga, no matter that he had told the shopkeeper there was not a shred of truth in the rumour.
If a politician says he won’t stand for an election, it probably means he’s about to win it. He’d said this himself so many times.
Well, not him. Return to the doga—pfa! They’d voted him out well enough. What had gotten into the brain of Sadorius han Chevonian to suggest they’d wanted him back?
Fifty signatures, that’s what. That’s almost half the doga, almost a majority.
He blinked, staring over the golden fields of grain, fruit of years of dogged labour, but saw instead the chamber of the doga, the men and women who debated Chevakia’s future seated in rows of benches. Facing him. Listening to him. They each had their copies of plans spread out before them. Not the precise details, oh no, never that, but enough to see what the army had in store for the unsuspecting Aranian attackers. Balloons. Air attacks.
The senators were loving it. From the moment he brought out those plans, he had ridden on a wave of support all the way into the Aranian capital.
Pfa, enough of this. His time in politics was over. Leave an old man to his retirement.
Peace. Quiet. Harvest time.
Milleus stomped into the control shed. Flung the door open. Lights flashed on panels on the wall. The harvester . . . He pressed a few buttons and returned to the shed’s entrance to look up the hillside. Over there, beyond a copse of trees was a shed that housed the machinery. In a moment, the door would open and the harvester would come out in a cloud of steam, followed by the bin truck, ready to cut and collect the grain and bring it to the storage bins next to the house. The bin truck would chop up the straw and bundle it into bales which would keep the goats comfortable in winter. A marvel of modern technology.
He loved being here, being one with the farm, the fields, the goats. Anything that threatened the farm . . .
Rising sonorics levels. Sady was right. As Proctor, he would have done something, and Destran should act. He should be organising emergency supplies. He should be writing a letter to the southern Queen demanding an explanation. He should be sending delegations, and spies.
Milleus sighed. It wasn’t his problem. Destran had wanted the leadership; Destran had called him incompetent. Well, let Destran find out the new meaning of incompetent.
The field was still empty.
Where was the harvester?
He went back to the panel and found all lights flashing orange. A malfunction. He pressed the reset button, and tried again. Immediately, the lights flashed orange again.
Mercy, what a day.
Well, there was nothing for it, he’d had to go and look. Hope it wouldn’t require a mechanic, because he hadn’t the time for waiting for parts to turn up and with this unseasonal cold spell, it might rain and the grain would get too moist.
He jumped into the van and revved it up the hill, leaving behind a cloud of hot steam.
The door of the harvester shed was closed. Possibly jammed. Well, that wasn’t hard to fix. He jumped out of the van and entered the shed through the side door . . . into the point of a knife.
“Mercy!”
Holding the knife was a wide-eyed, long-haired youth, about fifteen or so, with intense blue eyes and unruly dark hair. He wore an odd garment made from—of all things—empty seed bags.
He was not alone. Milleus caught a flash of someone else in the shed, movement under a heap of fur.
In one practiced swoop, he hit the knife from the youth’s hand. See, don’t play with an old man. I’m tougher than you think.
The boy went sprawling. Fell hard on his backside. A wooden leg shot out from under him.
Oh mercy, I’ve just hit an invalid.
A defensive invalid, though. The boy scrabbled in the straw, dirty hands searching.
Milleus kicked the knife aside and put his foot on the blade. Slowly, keeping his eye on the youth, he picked it up. “I’m sorry, but what are you doing in my barn?”
The youth said nothing, but stared at Milleus with those intense blue eyes.
He was too thin. Not a fighter, too young to be a trained soldier.
He had set up quite a neat camp here, with a box for a table, bales of straw for a bed—so that’s where the bales from the hay loft had gone—and furs for sitting. Right in the harvester’s path. And that was why it wouldn’t come out.
The furs stirred. A pale face peeped out between them, then vanished again. A girl, Milleus thought.
“Don’t be afraid. I won’t harm you. I just need to get my harvester out.” He gestured, wondering if the youths understood his words. With their furs and pale skin, they looked awfully foreign. They looked southern.
The girl had now lowered the furs. She was about the same age as the boy, had honey-coloured hair, grey eyes, and only one hand. Her face, pale as moonlight, wore a scared expression. She spoke a few words to the boy, equally scared, to which he replied in a soft voice.
Oh mercy—they were just runaways. Milleus stepped further into the shed, holding out his hands. “My name is Milleus.” He didn’t know if they understood, so he bowed his head to show he didn’t intend harm.
The girl threw the furs aside and rose, arms by her side. A skinny thing, she was, with arms thin as sticks and legs with bony knees. Her skin was deathly pale.
“We thank you, farmer.” Her voice sounded awfully formal. “We apologise that we have not asked permission to lodge in your shed.”
Milleus would have laughed if there hadn’t been that chilling tone to her voice, that self-assured toss of the head.
“Who are you?”
At this, the boy stepped between her and Milleus, holding a protective arm around her.
“We will go if we can’t stay.” His accent was much stronger and rougher.
Go, where to? Into the forest?
“No, no. I’m not telling you to go. I just want to know who you are, and how you got here, and what you’re doing in my barn.”
Did they have family in Chevakia he could notify? Were they planning on going anywhere?
“I am Isandor,” the
boy said, taking another step closer to Milleus. He was a handwidth taller than Milleus.
“And what about your friend?”
“Does not matter.” His voice was abrupt.
“Just her first name. Seeing where you’ve come from, I’m not going to contact the authorities in the City of Glass, aren’t I?”
A hostile look. Then a flick of the eyebrows. “Nila.”
“What?”
“Her name is Nila. No more.”
“All right.”
Well, maybe they were involved in some shady thing in the City of Glass. Maybe the girl’s rich parents wanted her back. Mercy, what was he to do with them?
“And what did you intend to do here? Do you have any family?”
“Can work,” the boy said, showing a white-skinned arm corded with muscles.
Well, that could be a temporary solution. Milleus did have a large pile of firewood to be chopped, and his back did happen to have developed an aversion to wood chopping. Not to mention gardening.
Besides, the guest wing to the house had been empty since he had last entertained the collected ambassadors here . . . he couldn’t remember how long ago. He carried the keys in his pocket. Everything would probably still be there.
“All right. You can stay here until I find another place for you. One thing, though, I will promise you: if you are in any way involved in a crime against a person or property either here or in your home country, you are asking the wrong person to help you. I will find out, and I will pass you onto the authorities. So you better be honest and swear you haven’t killed anyone or stolen anything.”
“We would never do such a thing, farmer,” the girl said.
Farmer. What did she think he was?
“My name is Milleus han Chevonian,” he grumbled. “Milleus for short.” Retired Proctor of Chevakia, so you better watch it.
Then again, his name didn’t mean anything to her, or if it did, she didn’t show it.
“Nice to meet you, Milleus. We are grateful for your help.”
Milleus turned away. He was too old to take this formal talk from someone barely a quarter his age.
You’re just a grumpy old man, Milleus, who has stopped caring.
“Now if you can take your stuff out of the way, I can get the harvester to work.”
The youngsters shifted their possessions which included straw-covered furs, eggs, the old pot which he used to feed the ducks—so that’s where it had gone—and some women’s underwear. He chuckled at that and wondered what Andreus’ wife would have made of her bloomers disappearing.
He pressed the manual button to open the large shed door. The boy gave a frightened squeak when the mechanism hummed into action.
The girl said something to him, and he relaxed, but still watched the door until it stopped moving.
“Come. I’ll take you to my house.”
For once, Milleus let the harvester do its work by itself. He took all of the youngsters’ possessions—their furs and some clothes almost too dirty to touch—and put them in the van. It took a lot of coaxing to get the boy anywhere near it. He pointed vehemently that he wanted to walk, and continued to do so after Milleus had turned off the engine, but Milleus told the girl in no uncertain terms that he would not have her walk all the way in the farm, that was not the way Chevakians treated their women, and she spoke to the boy in their strange language, and eventually his stance softened.
Milleus wanted to help the girl into the van, but the boy had evidently decided he was not going to let her out of his sight. An arm around her side, he helped her to the van, speaking in a strange language, and then he squished himself in the front seat next to her, his long limbs at odd angles.
“There’s a seat in the back, it’s much more comfortable,” Milleus said, while climbing in the driver’s seat.
“I sit here,” Isandor said in his intense way. He held onto the girl’s shoulders and her one hand.
Oh mercy, have it your way.
Milleus started the van and drove back to the homestead, accompanied only but the puff of the engine. The boy held a white-knuckled hand over the girl’s fingers. The girl stared at the various gauges, the pressure-metres, the water level metres, the temperature of the engine. At times, Milleus thought he lips moved, as if she wanted to ask a question, but she didn’t. She puzzled him, much more composed than her flighty companion.
They arrived at the house and he pulled up at the front door. The youngsters got out, staring wide-eyed. Yes, Milleus knew the doors needed painting and the straw roof supported a veritable botanic garden of native succulents. Some were even flowering, pink daisies that moved their little heads with the sun.
Milleus opened the back door to get the filthy bundles of cloth from the back, and when he shut the van, the boy had closed his arms around the girl, nuzzling the skin in her neck. She spoke a few soft words; he smiled, his eyes all dreamy.
Milleus remembered a day too long ago, when the most beautiful woman he had ever seen waited in the garden surrounded by both their families. Music played and people laughed, but he only had eyes for her. Suri, his Suri in her beautiful dress, flowers in her hair.
“Come.” He stomped into the cool hall, not sure why he was so angry, and wishing he wasn’t. He dumped the dirty clothes in the laundry and returned to the youngsters in the hall. They still held each other, hands intertwined.
“You live here alone?” the boy asked.
“Yes.” Do you have a problem with that? “Come. I’ll show you the rooms.”
He pulled his key-ring from his pocket and found the age-blackened key to the guest quarters. The door creaked when it opened and a waft of stale air spilled out. He half-expected some ghost of the past to come flitting down the corridor. Dena, or Horus or any of the other long-gone servants, but his footsteps sounded hollow as he went into the linen room. The sun slanted through dirt-streaked windows.
“You’ll want some sheets.”
He had to yank the door to the cupboard hard, but the sheets inside were still neatly folded, although the bunch of herbs Dena used to put on them fallen to dust with age.
Two sheets each, a pillowcase. Blankets were on the beds as far as he remembered. He hoped nothing had eaten them. He put everything in a pile and led down the corridor.
The first room . . .
Mercy, the Aranian ambassador used to stay here. Ghosts of the past flew by. The scent of tobacco, the chesty laugh, the rough voice. Milleus, sure you will join me for a drink?
The room was musty and empty, but a folded blanket lay on the bed, an empty pitcher stood on the table by the window—mercy, the cobwebs! Milleus cleared his throat.
“Isandor, you can sleep here.” He dumped two sheets and a pillowcase on the bed. “And you . . .” He left the room again.
Suri’s mother’s room had an elegant couch, a table, a marble fireplace, a large four-poster bed with frilly curtains that were—or used to be—pink. Sunlight had faded the fabric, as well as a patch on the carpet, which used to be dark red, and was now dirty yellow. Mercy, the dust.
But the girl stood in the doorway taking it all in, letting her strange grey eyes roam. Her expression showed neither approval nor disapproval.
“This will be your room,” Milleus said into the uncomfortable silence. “There is a bathroom at the end of the corridor if you want to get freshened up. You’ll find some clothes in the cupboard. I hope there’s something that fits you.” Mercy, some of those were Suri’s clothes. “I’ll be in the kitchen. I’m afraid the fare on the farm is pretty simple—”
“Thank you so much.”
Milleus nodded, and left.
In the kitchen, he busied himself with the fire in the stove and unpack
ed the seldom-touched items from his pantry onto the table, after clearing this morning’s plates. Mercy, mercy. What did he have to feed two hungry children? He could not really use that stock powder anymore. It looked suspiciously mouldy.
Soup? Some bread? Well, that wouldn’t last more than a day. He’d have to go into town to buy more. And he must buy some vegetables, too. At least he had plenty of meat and milk and cheese.
He set a large pot to boil with bones and herbs. Fresh soup would be good, never mind the powder.
There was a small noise. Milleus looked up to see the youngsters at the door, still holding hands. In Sady’s hunting gear, Isandor had gained about ten years in age. Yes, Milleus was not mistaken—he did have dark fuzz on his chin.
But the girl . . . Nila, although he didn’t for once believe that was her name . . .
No. You can’t wear that dress.
Suri whirled around so that the pretty frills formed a full circle around her thin waistline. Oh Milleus, thank you. It’s so pretty!
He laughed and scooped her up in his arms, stroking the soft belly that did not yet show the child within.
A pretty house needs a pretty woman.
The girl—Nila—had just such a thin waistline. Her hair, done up in a delicate bun, was straight and very southern, but the dress fitted her. No, not that dress. Milleus turned, cleared his throat and put the soup on the table.
“There’s no fancy tableware, I’m afraid.” Yes, there was, in the cupboard in the dining room, equally unused and probably dusty beyond redemption.
“It doesn’t matter,” the girl said. “Thank you.”
Milleus scooped soup into bowls and distributed big chunks of bread. Isandor gulped the soup, holding his spoon in his clenched fist like a farm worker, and ate like someone would run off with his plate.
Nila sat up straight like the highborn girl Milleus was sure she was. She held the spoon in her dainty hand, and ate slowly, pulling little pieces off the bread before putting them in her mouth.