Slave Line (The Young Ancients)

by Power, P. S.

  There was an apology needed after all. Not to her, because he hadn't wronged her. Or his mother. She'd made her own pie and could taste it first.

  But he hadn't apologized to Denno yet, even though the man had been cleared of wronging him with his own Truth amulet. At least for the reason Tor had beaten him. It might not work on the man, but Tor kind of thought it probably would. He hadn't been ready for a real one to be used after all. There was still the question of how Kara the Royal guard had gotten to see the scene of Brown and him, but Tor thought he knew and didn't want to ask in public. It was likely that Brown had mentioned what Tor had done to the King and Queen and actually given them proof somehow from Austra, since the Ancient wouldn't have believed Tor could pull it off at the time. Then one of them had let some of the guard see it, probably not thinking it was anything other than heroic on Tor's part. Or possibly just interesting being different than the magic they were used too. It didn't really matter though. The people he didn't want to know about it, his own family, did. The rest was just embarrassing, but not something for him to get worked up over.

  Still, he'd wronged the man without cause. Nearly killing him for it in fact. You didn't get a lot closer to that than hanging a man from a magical carriage for all to see while falsely accusing him. More, he was the leader of a foreign land. It was a huge problem and went beyond mere family issues.

  Tor used his own healing amulet, one of the many sigils on what he considered his second set, handing it off as soon as Brown woke up and pointing to show which brightly colored glowing sign to hit. The green one that looked like the outline of a man.

  Then he laid on the floor on his stomach, gasping as his broken arm tried to take his weight briefly, nearly passing out from the pain. He panted for a second while everyone looked at him funny. Well, most of the Ancients did. The people with him, Trice, and even his mother got it. It was the noble tradition when apologizing for something when you knew that you were fully and truly wrong. The kind of thing where you knew you were guilty, on a basic level, of a thing no one could, or possibly should, truly forgive.

  "I cannot beg forgiveness for the wrong I've done you brother. I cannot make true reparations, but offer you all I own, past what is needed for upkeep of my Lady wife, including my life if it is required. All lands, titles and concerns are yours. I know this isn't enough, but please be satisfied with retribution against myself. I acted for no other and no one else deserves punishment for what I did. I shall accept your judgment in this even to mortality." He stopped talking, not knowing what Denno would do or really caring. It probably wouldn't be death, but the man could order him into exile with a clear conscience, or to slave away for the rest of his life on projects for himself and Austra. If he was actually guilty of trying to kill them he might even order him to try and kill all the others.

  Tor wouldn't do that though. There was honor involved, but it had to have limits or it just became an excuse to be petty and cruel to others. If he sent him away though, or into slavery or torture, Tor would just have to go. He waited while the Austran Ancient looked baffled, then worried.

  There was a gasp behind Tor, that sounded like Ali, and a rustling of fabric as someone knelt beside him, then laid on the floor. At first he figured it to be his wife, but looked over to the right, which hurt like heck, to find it was his mother. Her cheek was on the floor as well and somehow Laurie managed to sound actually contrite when she spoke.

  "The wrong done you was due to my... error. I cannot allow my child to take responsibility for it alone."

  Tor noticed she didn't offer anything up, but then Denno should be pretty happy with having everything Tor had. It might bankrupt Noram if he packed it all off to Austra though. Hopefully Burks could talk the man into spending some of it in Noram? Maybe buy goods with it or something.

  Instead the man laid on the floor too.

  "It is I who should apologize Tor. In my absent mindedness I allowed a thing to be seen by many in my land, without taking time to consider that it might be harmful to you. It is the curse of being old. After enough time things such as embarrassment and even anger lose their sting. You forget that others feel things more acutely than you do yourself. I promise that I'll do what I can to make sure the device you used to save me is removed from public view and that people understand the harm it does you. I... cannot take it away from all that own it. That isn't possible at this point, but I promise I'll do everything I can."

  Then he stood.

  "Notice I didn't absolve you though Laurie? There won't be beatings or taking of all your worldly goods, but we will be having a talk about this later. With Lara and Burks. I know I expect more from my own niece and I imagine they will have similar feelings about their child." He moved to help Tor stand up, but he activated his Not-flyer instead. It was still agony getting to and upright position, but it wasn't as bad as it might have been.

  No passing out for instance.

  Orange let Ali help her do the questioning, which had Denno cleared of any obvious wrong doing pretty quickly, though even he had to admit that the technology seemed Austran in nature and that he might have been influenced by some means he didn't understand yet. Things got a lot more interesting when they started with Gray though, the woman telling a lie right off the bat.

  "I know nothing about any of this." It was a broad statement, but an untruth. She knew something at least, or thought she might. It took a while to get it out of her, since she was being cagy about it all.

  Orange nearly slapped her after about half an hour of it, and stopped only because Alyssa put her hand out and moved in front of the woman, cringing as she did. The blow stopped in the air, a scant hair above the girls shield, not engaging it at all.

  "Wait. I think I know what's going on here. May I try asking some questions? I don't know if it will fix it all, but I've seen this kind of thing before." She held her ground bravely enough then, as Orange stepped back, a smile on her face.

  "Can't do worse that I have. Do it. Make her talk."

  Ali did.

  "Gray... I need you to be very specific in your answers now. Do you know who exactly attacked us today for certain?"

  "No. I said that earlier." She sounded peeved, but then she normally did.

  The field didn't go black though and Ali smiled.

  "The questions left things too vague, so you didn't actually say that at all. Do you think you might know whose may be behind this attack today?"

  The woman froze, her familiar looking face going so still she didn't look alive for a moment, even her loose gray robe stopped moving.

  "I... Have a guess. It may not be correct." It was true, at least to the best of her knowledge, which was made clear by the nice strong cream and yellow glow.

  Ali nodded, as if trying to encourage her to go on, but she didn't. Finally Burks raised his head and walked over, looking a little annoyed.

  "Who then Lara? No need to keep us all in the dark. This is obviously something fairly convoluted."

  "Fine... It's... I think it might be... Cordes. I know that seems unlikely, but hear me out..." She stopped talking, and found that no one was trying to stop her.

  Tor nodded and so did all the Blues.

  "That makes sense. Whose head is he in?"

  Lara went wide eyed and tried to pace, which got Orange to take her arm and growl at her as if she might be getting ready to flee. There was no word involved in the action, but it worked to get the Ancient woman that looked like a girl to hold still. When she spoke her voice shook softly, something that Tor wouldn't have thought she could manage for real. It was nearly fear based, as far as he could tell.

  "Heads, plural. It... About a thousand years ago... no, wait, I'll start at the beginning. Four hundred years after it happened and society failed all over the globe, the cataclysm, Cordes came to me in Afrak and gave me a nano hive with an imprint of his mind in it. He said he was afraid he was dying, if slowly, and wanted to make sure that Noram was provided for in the future. Th
is was before Green stepped in to guard the place, so it was a real enough fear. He just asked that I see to placing it in a proper host if the need ever arose.

  So... after he was killed I left it for some time, not finding anyone worthy of it, besides, Green was in charge of Noram and while it changed he seemed to do a good enough job aver all. A little too violent and not controlled enough, but decent. But then he came to me about a thousand years ago and asked if we should be thinking about protecting the future. After all, we've lost many in the last three thousand years and don't breed fast enough to replenish our numbers. Not even close. So we started a program to try and make copies of ourselves that would work within the treaty." She looked around at everyone, and got a nod from Burks. He chimed in, his voice calm.

  "Yes, we held to the letter and I believe spirit of it. Laurie and Tor aren't clones, they're guided in development but natural offspring. I created a field to try and hold the pattern as closely as possible, which got Laurie to be born."

  Gray nodded.

  "Only she wasn't me. She was genetically, but she lacked my Rhetistics. Anyway, that's later in the story. I knew that we might fail when we started, so I set the nano colony loose... in Denno's Larvals. They used a similar system to pass information already, so for generations they've been carrying the Cordes consciousness within them. It shouldn't have woken up unless they were placed under vast stress, but they are used for assassinations and other dark works. If they woke up at any point, even in one of the clones, well, he'd be there with all of them. I kind of suspected that he would have come forward though, if that happened. Cordes was a fine man before he went insane. Why wouldn't he make himself known?"

  It made some sense. The Larval weren't immortal, but they shared all their conscious information and it built up over time, carrying from one generation of the things to the next. Tor grimaced as the Cordes in his brain started screaming. He seemed to think that was a horrible idea. So did the rest of the Ancients, except Gray.

  Tor looked at them and sighed.

  "So... Two of us at least have this dead guy in our heads and so do, what is it Denno, fourteen hundred Larval assassins? That's going to end well, isn't it? Didn't you say that having that many would drive them insane eventually?"

  They talked the whole thing out, but it was the puzzle piece they needed. The threat, the one that had been hunting him his whole life nearly, was from them. Insane Cordes super killers. They'd infected Burks with the Rhetistic set well before Tor was born most likely. Maybe even just by bleeding on him or being around the man. It hadn't done anything to Green, of course, already having his own set in place. The new one couldn't gain purchase, so it just lived in the blood, waiting.

  For Burks to get clever and realize that he could make an almost perfect copy of himself with just a tiny shot of his own blood into an immortal baby. Then if anything happened to him, Noram would have a back-up. Someone to watch out for them that wouldn't have a choice in the matter.

  A slave. Like Burks was.

  "Except..." Cordes Blue put in, her pale face looking slightly stern as she stared at the others.

  "The Cordes Rhetistics were meant to act faster, so they got into place and formed a second personality, then stayed dormant for some reason. The one in me activated early, when I was only about twelve days old. My personality and current mentality is based on a combination of biology and that template laid in at an early age. Tor Purple seems to be an individual personality however, not influenced in a similar fashion. Perhaps it was due to the early triggering systems encountering a different set of biological sub-structures? That or the multiple Rhetistic competition in his system early on?"

  Tor forced a chuckle, not really finding it funny at all.

  "So. I can't do anything about any of that at the moment. Anyone have an idea about what to do with the Larval Cordes then? They obviously want us dead. Or one of us at any rate, and don't care about the others. I'm not vain enough to think that's really about me, though... they really did seem to want me dead each time we've met before, like it was a personal thing. Of course if they were going after Cordes to get rid of the competition I could see it... How would they know though? That would make Blue a better target to take out anyway, don't you think? Truer to the initial form, if I understand it all correctly."

  Timon shook his head and walked to the middle of the group.

  "No. That doesn't make sense at all. What if they were trying to make it seem like you'd die though Tor, in order to trigger the Cordes thing in you? I mean, they're assassins and there are a whole lot of them. They could have killed you if they wanted to. Instead they just kind of pushed at you. Teasing you. I mean, I could be wrong, but it has to be at least as likely as them failing all those times. If they wanted you dead they could have just used these missiles on Two Bends and we'd all be gone." His tone sounded older than his years, which got most of the Ancients to nod slightly.

  "Possible." Orange stroked her chin and just stood for a while doing that. It looked funny, like an old man, not an attractive looking young woman, but he wasn't going to say anything about it. Not his place.

  "We could... Work with that as an assumption for now. It seems likely that we have to deal with the Larval anyway, right after we fix Tor's arms and nose. Though leaving it a little crooked could help. You're a bit too pretty the other way. You look like a girl."

  It was a joke of course, so Tor ignored it. He couldn't help how he looked, could he? Besides, she looked like a girl too.

  She smiled at him and took his right hand firmly, placing her left on the front of his chest.

  "Relax the muscles of your arm and tell me when you are ready. We have to set it. It will be painful."

  Tor didn't wait, dropping into a trance instantly, relaxing as best he could feeling his face go slack and arm limp. He stood away from the pain, but wasn't deep enough for it all to go away. He doubted he had time for it. Orange would probably start pulling in a few seconds, so he couldn't brace himself for the pain.

  The woman didn't though, just waiting patiently.

  "Alright. Go." He said the words and forced himself not to tighten up as she pulled gently, straightening his right arm. It didn't pop or anything like that, but it did hurt, even with him killing off the pain as he was. Then he felt warm hands on his arm at the point of the break guiding the bone back into place. His eyes were closed so he didn't know who it was. When he opened them his mother was there, her face white, but the bones felt right, except for the pain.

  He built a splint without waiting, using his clothing amulet. It was handy for it, providing what was needed without extra materials. It was a soft thing though, built out of layers of shield material meant to look like stiff leather and lined with soft cotton, for comfort.

  Then Orange grabbed his nose and pulled without warning, which did make a popping sound and started the bleeding again. He had to make a rag to hold against it and tilt his head back. It was annoying since it tied up his only good arm. What if he had to fight someone? What if the Larval hit him with more missiles? The craft he'd been in had held, but the impact had nearly killed him anyway, even with a shield on. It was, he knew, due to the fact that that force had nowhere else to go, since the shield of the craft couldn't take it like the ground would have. that meant it had coursed through his body in waves until he absorbed it all. It was probably worse than if he hadn't had the shield on at all. He was lucky to be alive.

  It hit him suddenly. He hadn't thought about it before, but Tor had been a lot closer to death than it seemed. If the meeting house had been a real one, made of the metal it looked like, or maybe even just a different shape, they could all have died. A sense of dread came over him then.

  "OK. We need to take out the Larval I guess. We need weapons and a real strike force. Can we do it without them catching on to what we're doing do you think Denno?" This was the hardest part, getting the Ancient to help.

  The Larval were, in a very real way, Brown's children. The
only ones he'd ever had. Now Tor was blithely talking about killing them all. It was a thing Brown couldn't do personally and probably would have to argue against. Tor shook his head slowly.

  "Sorry Denno. I know how you must feel, but they aren't just your creations now and really seem to be insane. Maybe on several levels, we're going to have to act before they get a chance to respond and we can't be divided on this. I understand if you can't help us, but we need information to do this right. If we can at all. If we wait too long they'll probably just attack again. They already killed several people today trying to get to us. Provided it was them, of course. If we miss any of them, they'll scatter. For that matter some of them already have, most likely. I would have with their kind of numbers. Cordes too, I think. I mean it feels right." Tor looked over at the Blues who stood in a loose group, surrounding the tallest one, Cynthia.

  Their Cordes nodded.

  "Agreed. It would make sense to be certain they didn't present too easy a target. If it were me I'd keep one large group and then send about half of the others off to random locations. All over the world in fact. After this they have to suspect that an attack will be coming, particularly if they saw Purple trying to follow them. Still, we can't do much about it at the moment. We need the Tellerand Ancient, if he still lives, and to discuss the reason why we were all called here, if indeed it wasn't about this Cordes situation?" She knew the answer, it was clear, but was letting Brown have a chance to bring up his real concern. Like they were working together and had a plan to convince the others.

  Denno stepped forward, and spread his hands.

  "No, it's the incoming fleets. I believe you personally were involved in observing them?"

  That Blue gave a single dip of the head and closed her eyes, thinking.

  "Yes, we used remote sensors placed in permanent orbit. They are most definitely coming. They do seem to be spread out and in separate groups, but other than that we can't determine much. The lead ships look like the historical records of the four-ten, as you were told, the others do not. That could mean almost anything." She went still as Cynthia Blue took over without so much as batting an eye to clue the other version of herself in on the idea.