by Patty Jansen
“There was a level two alert,” Farius said, his face red. “Ontane says all the windows make our houses vulnerable to sonorics, so we’re putting up stuff to cover them. Look.” He climbed down the ladder and picked up a piece of paper. It had diagrams with writing in an unfamiliar scrawl and unreadable script. “He says that once sonorics motes get into a building, they bounce around the walls until they’ve lost all their energy. But now that energy is in the walls, radiating it back onto the people inside. It’s less safe inside than it is outside. So that’s why you board up the windows. If the house is closed, that makes a cage that the motes won’t penetrate so easily.”
That made a lot of sense in a warped sort of way. Through his fatigue, Sady regarded the southern man Ontane, who stood holding a box of nails. A scruffy sort of fellow, who strangely reminded Sady of his father’s brother, who had never had much time for pomp and ceremony. It was a painful memory, after that funeral service. He fought to keep those thoughts away; tears were closer than any time during the service. He had never cared enough about his family. “But . . . you’re putting a carpet up over the window.”
“We ran out of boards. We figured this room was less important than some of the others, since you don’t use it very often. We’ve already done all the important rooms. I thought you’d approve.”
“I guess I do.” Here they were, two complete strangers, making a home for themselves. “I’m just extremely tired.” He shrugged, fighting tears. Lana’s presence was everywhere in this house. “Do whatever you see fit, I’m going to bed. Just don’t make any loud noises.” Although he suspected that he would sleep through those as well. Belatedly, he added, “Thank you.”
He turned for the door.
“Make sure you go past the kitchen,” Farius said. “The women have been cooking.”
The women? Did that mean he’d found someone to replace Merni?
“All right.” Then he recalled that he had promised Loriane to start teaching her Chevakian.
Mercy.
Sady left the room. In the hall, he almost bumped into Dara scrubbing the floor.
“Oh, pardon me,” he said.
She said something in her language. She looked busy and red-cheeked, so he side-stepped the wet patches as much as he could.
He went into the kitchen, where many oil lamps and candles lit the room. It was quite warm in here, contrary to the rest of the house.
“Uncle!”
One of Milleus’ granddaughters in the kitchen. Reili was only eleven, but she was already as tall as an adult, albeit half the width. She was wearing one of Lana’s aprons, and gave him a soap-scented hug.
“What are you doing here? Didn’t you hear the ringing of the bell? Twice. You should stay inside.”
“I am inside.” She held herself straight with all her aristocratic righteousness. “I came here to bring roccas because Farius said this morning that Merni can’t cook, and found a friend.”
Myra stood at the stove and smiled at her.
“What about your mother? She’ll be worried.”
“She knows I’m here. Really, uncle, do you know how old I am?”
Yes, he knew, and eleven wasn’t old enough to make her own decisions.
Sady walked to the stove and lifted the lid on the pot that stood there. It contained a concoction of strips of meat, beans and turnips. “What is this?” Sady asked. It smelled considerably nicer than it looked.
“I don’t know. Myra made it.”
“Is this what they eat in the south?”
Reili laughed. “No, silly. It’s what we could find in the kitchen. You really should do some shopping.”
Food supplies would be low. Sady had told Lana not to go out when the bell rang.
“If you would let me, I could—”
“No, Reili.”
“We have suits, if that bothers you.” Most families would have old suits stashed away somewhere.
“No. You should be home.” It disturbed him how lightly the young generation took sonorics threats.
“But I’m bored.”
“Your mother . . .” He didn’t have a good relationship with Milleus’ daughter-in-law. She frequently accused him of giving the girls strange ideas. Besides, he had no energy to argue with anyone right now.
The house was clean, and safe, and there was food on the table. What more did he want? Let his niece and her mother sort out their differences at home.
He sat down at the table next to Loriane. Someone had found her a simple woollen dress. Sady had no idea who it had belonged to—one of the past servants maybe—and the thing was probably horribly out of fashion, but it was elegant dark red and looked gorgeous on her. She wore her curly hair loose, combed over her shoulders.
Toki Takes the Train lay on the table in front of her.
“Give me the book,” he said, holding out his hand.
He dragged it over the table and opened it at a random page, which showed the boy Toki’s house. “What’s this?” he pointed.
“House,” Loriane said. The word sounded strange in her mouth.
“And this?”
“Train.”
“I’ve been teaching her some things. She’s smart.” Reili elbowed Loriane in the side. “You say it.”
“You . . . want . . . tea?” Her blue eyes met his.
“Yes, I would love some.”
She rose to get a cup. Her hair hung to halfway down her waist, which was quite narrow despite her recent pregnancy. Her hips were broad, and her backside round and full.
Farius came into the kitchen and sat at the table. “Doing well,” he said in answer to Sady’s questioning eyes. “My brother will come to help me with the guard duties.”
“Thank mercy. No sign of the baby?”
“No.”
Loriane stood at the porcelain cupboard, staring at the two of them.
“We’ll find the child,” Sady said, speaking clearly, so she could understand.
She came back to the table with cups. “I must warn,” she said.
“You mean plead?”
“No. Warn.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. She’s been talking about this all day,” Reili said while she emptied the wash tub. Then she glanced at Myra. “The others don’t like it when she brings it up. It’s like they’re embarrassed by what she’s trying to say.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea.”
Sady took tea and cradled the cup in his cold hands. “Has Loriane been very upset?”
“Not that much.”
Sady knew that southerners had strange family arrangements. Loriane was probably what they called a breeder, who bore children for other people. Judging by her age, it was unlikely to have been her first child
Loriane said, “Warn. Get away.”
Get away. From what? “I don’t understand,” Sady said.
Reili said, “I’ve been saying that all day. It’s something to do with the child.”
Loriane’s eyes were intense. “Yes. The child. Girl. Danger.”
“Yes, we are trying to find the baby for you. We’ll do our best.”
But when he met her intense expression, he felt terrible. Chances that they’d find the child alive were very small.
He continued to go through the book with Loriane. His niece brought more tea, and then dinner, and they all ate around the table by the light of many candles.
They were a strange assortment of people. Farius seemed to get on quite well with Ontane, and it was comical to see the two discuss building methods—Farius’ father was a builder—without a common language between the
m. Reili was disturbingly interested by Myra’s baby, and she rocked the boy on her knee while Myra ate. Seeing the Myra struggle, Sady resolved to find out how much it would cost to give her a claw hand.
They talked, and laughed through awkward language mashups.
The mood was rudely broken up when Reili’s mother came to the door. She not only scolded her daughter for staying out so long, but proceeded to tear a strip off Sady for allowing her daughter to interact with these people, so that she had to come and rescue the girl in her state and poked out her six-month-pregnant belly. Whatever Sady protested, it mattered not. She dragged her oldest daughter out and left Sady to stand in the hall. There was a soft noise behind him. Loriane stood in the doorway, backlit from the kitchen. Imagine what she had gone through, coming here on that disgusting train just moments before giving birth.
Sady suddenly felt very tired.
“Going to sleep,” he said and mimicked sleeping.
“Good night.”
“Goodnight to you, too.”
He slowly climbed the stairs, and re-assessed his earlier plans to return the southerners to the camp. Maybe what Lana’s memory needed was for this house to be as much as a home as he could make it, in her spirit. And a house needed people. He quite liked these ones.
Chapter 16
* * *
JEVAITHI WOKE in the comfortable nest of furs and the familiar feeling of soft leather against her naked skin. She wondered why she had awoken, because it was still pitch dark. The breeze made the sides of the tent billow inwards.
There was a small noise close by, without a doubt inside the tent. She reached out to the other side of the bed where Isandor had climbed in some time long after she had gone to bed. The spot was empty, but the furs still warm.
“Isandor?” she whispered, straining to see.
The noise stopped.
“Go back to sleep,” he said.
“What are you doing?”
“Please, go back to sleep.”
She sat up, drawing the furs over her naked skin. The tent cloth flapped with a gust of wind that made her shiver. Something jingled that sounded like the clasp of a cloak being done up.
“Isandor, please. Let me know what’s going on.” She rose from the bed and padded across the earthen floor where she sensed Isandor standing. She touched his chest, and her fingertips met the warm fur of his cloak. “You’re going outside?” She went to kiss him, but he brushed her off, just like he had earlier that night, after finally coming to bed. It opened up a big hole of uncertainty in her. This was the third day that he hadn’t made love to her. Did he not love her anymore? The thought closed on her like a vice. Everything had changed since she’d gone back to being Queen. They should never have come here, but stayed on Milleus’ farm.
“Where are you going?”
“There is something I need to do,” he said.
“I’m coming.”
“No. It could be dangerous.”
“I’m still coming.” She grabbed her clothes and started to pull them on, humid and dirty as they were. “Do you think nothing we’ve done so far was dangerous? We were going to stay together. You promised. And any trouble you make I will have to deal with anyway.”
“All right.” He snorted. “Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”
She finished dressing and followed him out of the tent, where two shadows fell in step with them.
Isandor said, “These are Kenna and Zito. We can trust them.”
At least whatever he was doing wasn’t secretive enough to do so without guards. That comforted her, a little.
After the Chevakians had withdrawn, people had re-arranged the tents in more familiar pattern of circles. The open space of the circle that included their tent was deserted. The fire in the open-sided cooking tent had died to a feeble glow. Jevaithi could still smell the scent of the animal that had been roasted for dinner, and could still taste its tangy meat which stuck between the teeth.
They walked into the night. The cold and humid air bit into parts of her skin not covered by the cloak. The only sound was the whistling of the wind through the guy ropes and the occasional flap of canvas.
Isandor led the group into a narrow alley sheltered from the wind. At the end, they came to the large tent where Chevakian trucks had brought supplies that afternoon. Isandor pushed aside the flap and disappeared inside. The guards and Jevaithi followed, into in darkness. One of the guards lit a torch, a small pool of orange light. Jevaithi was surprised how young the boy Zito was. He would have been no older than fourteen. The other guard Kenna was a young woman, probably in her twenties. She bowed when meeting Jevaithi’s eyes.
“I’m honoured to serve, Your Majesty.”
Isandor bade them to be silent. The boy held the torch aloft, and its long flapping flames lit stacks of boxes around the tent’s perimeter. Isandor walked around and studied them all, before selecting one and using his dagger to pry it open. Jevaithi didn’t dare say anything, but wondered what he was doing. The Chevakians had brought these things, why should they contain anything other than food and clothing?
Isandor said, “Come on, if you want to be of any use, give me a hand.”
She took the dagger Zito offered her and carefully inserted it in the crack in the wood between the lid and side of the crate. She had no idea how to do this type of thing, and felt awkward, afraid that she was going to make a noise and bring someone down. The Brothers most likely, since they had overseen the unloading of the trucks.
They worked quickly, and when Isandor lifted the lid off the crate, the torchlight hit . . . the metal barrels of Chevakian guns.
She looked into Isandor’s face, sweaty with the effort. “Did you know this was in here?”
He met her eyes, his expression grim. “I wasn’t sure, but I had a suspicion. You know how the Chevakians brought in supplies earlier today? Well, I saw Simo talking with one of them and he seemed to know this person. I thought it was odd, because why would he know Chevakians? Also, this happened when the other Chevakian truck drivers were arguing with Milleus and his group. While that was going on, these few Chevakians were unloading these boxes from the truck. I suspected there was something odd going on.”
Jevaithi had seen that, too. With nothing else to do in the camp, and a plethora of guards stopping her going to see Milleus, how could she have missed the supply trucks coming in? However, she had not thought there was anything unusual going on.
“But why—”
Then there was a noise. Isandor froze. Kenna yelped.
A huge man stood behind her and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Be quiet.” His voice was rough, his clothing black and beard big and bushy.
Three other men pushed in through the tent flap and moved into the light. Two of them were equally huge. The third man was Simo.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” He started off in his usual sarcastic voice, but then he noticed the open crate with the guns, and he glared at Isandor.
For a moment, no one said anything. Jevaithi held her breath, expecting Simo or one of his hulking henchmen to lash out at Isandor. She shuffled closer to him. If they wanted to harm him, they would have to harm her first, and she had a feeling that they might want to harm her, but couldn’t afford to do so. She felt Isandor’s warmth behind her and felt for his hand. Their hearts beat in unison.
“So, we have two children snooping around in places where they are not allowed.”
Isandor said, “You trade weapons with the Chevakians behind the Queen’s back.”
Jevaithi tightened her grip on his hand in the hope he wouldn’t try to do something stupid. The other man still held Kenna and Zito stood, wide-eyed and white-faced, clutching the torch. Fortunately, it hadn’t occurred
to him to use the dagger at his side, because if he had, it would only have led to disaster.
Simo laughed. “You’re surprised that the world doesn’t revolve around you?”
If Jevaithi had been uncertain about Simo’s loyalty to her, she was certain now. To him, her turning up had been a nuisance. The common people’s adoration of her was a hitch in his plans.
She said, “Actually, a lot of the world of the refugees does revolve around us.”
Simo took a few steps towards her. Side-lit by the torchlight, she could see the pores on his face. His mouth quivered. Jevaithi braced herself to be hit in face, but he breathed out forcefully, and retreated. He gave a mock bow. “Your Highness, how long would your popularity last if through your actions, the people went hungry?”
She glared back at him. “Is that a threat?”
“If you choose to see it that way.” He flicked his eyebrows in see if I care way. “We have Chevakian supporters who bring us supplies we need, rather than starvation rations.”
“Is that so?” Isandor said. “I guess we can also eat guns. I think we might complain to the Chevakians that they delivered some wrong crates.”
Simo snorted and spread his hands, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. “Why am I even arguing with a couple of children?”
“Because you need us.”
Simo whirled at him. “I don’t need you.”
To Isandor’s credit, he didn’t flinch or back away. “You do need us, because most people in the camp are curious about you, happy that you’re not Knights, but don’t support you outright either. They do, however, support the Queen.”
That was the truth, and Jevaithi read it in Simo’s face. If the Brotherhood had wanted power, they’d failed at making clear what they stood for.
“Who are these Chevakian supporters of yours?” Isandor continued.
“Private Chevakian citizens.”
“Chevakians, helping us? Why would they do that?”