"You said she would be looked after."
"Oh she will be. We have her well cared for. But what life do you want for her? The life of a refugee, always beholden to the charity of others? Or a free life, well supported, happy with her husband?"
Harper did not answer.
"You would have money, enough to buy a comfortable life. As an expert, not a combatant, you would be well-protected."
Harper looked at his reflection in the shiny black top of the table, and didn't speak.
"Think about it."
"I have. I will not be a spy."
"You wouldn't be."
"What would you call it?"
"You would help us understand the culture, develop a way to reach the Sky cults and their ilk, find common ground, foster dialogue. You would more of an... anthropologist. Not a spy."
"You call it a more comfortable word, but it is still the same job."
"Think about it."
"I do think about it. Unlike you. You destroyed half the countryside."
"Just think what we would have had to do without your help. With an insider, with an expert, we could pinpoint our targets. With more help, we could execute missions with surgical precision. Much less damage."
"Hm."
"Think about it," Apep said again.
And with that, the bearded man got up and walked out of the room, and Harper was left alone. He closed his eyes. His father's face rose behind his eyelids. Always the same. Always the same.
Abomination... Abomination!
Chapter Thirty
in which there is surprise...
"Take a break."
"Yes, sir."
The guard – Apep had forgotten his name, Dorson, maybe or Dorset or Dob or... it didn't matter – he left without question. The old soldier sat back in the vacated seat in front of the monitors, this time looking at the room he had just left. The phone in his hand cast a silver light on the neat beard and the fine lines in the face, lines around the eyes the mouth. Laugh lines. He smiled into the phone.
"Yes, sir, we got the father."
He poked at a monitor, and the neat little rooms of the ship disappeared. Again, the old man, who probably was not that old and who was now a parsec behind, shone on the screen, still curled on the hard sleeping platform. Apep reached out a hand again and he swiped in another window, back to the big, bulky Skyland ship lumbering through space around him. A young man flopped back onto a pillowy bed, and stared at the ceiling with blank eyes.
"Actually he... he got his father. Harper Fields caught his own father before he destroyed another ship. He caught his old man himself."
A distant voice, faint as it reached all the way from Union Proper, whispered into the dark security room from the phone in the bearded man's hand.
"Do you believe him?" it said.
"Yes. I think so."
Silence from the other end of the phone.
"Well, no. No I don't." Apep shook his head.
"Mhm."
"I don't think he caught his father. I think that was an accident. But I think he will help us. I believe that."
"Yes?"
"Yes. He tried to help the chair maker."
"Really?" Surprise lifted the quiet voice on the other end of the phone.
Apep smiled wider. "He was quite inventive, really. He found all the ways out of the base – even ones we hadn't thought of. He was ready to jeopardize his own deal with us – with his wife and everything – to help the old man."
"He is a fighter."
"That he is." Apep nodded to the empty room and the invisible voice on the other end of the phone. "He really is."
"Good. Hold on to him."
"Of course."
"And, Apep."
"Yes?"
"Please hurry."
The voice disappeared from the other end, the phone clicked, and the dark room was silent again.
Chapter Thirty One
in which there is blue...
The doorbell rang.
Zara jumped at the alien sound.
Why don't they just knock here?
The woman from Den – a tiny woman, fat but short almost as a child, an old grandma who'd taken in refugees for the money – waddled to the door. Zara tensed, cringing into her blanket, clutching the hot cup in front of her.
The door opened and she choked, her breath stopped by the cold. But she turned her face into the frigid gust, white puffs of air skipping from her nostrils as she struggled to breathe. The cold bit at her face even at this distance, but she couldn't help herself. She squinted into the wind, straining to see the person at the door.
Harper?
A skinny man, very young and vaguely familiar, stood at the door wearing the dirt brown of the Union soldiers.
Of course not.
She turned her face away, eyes watering from the cold blowing in from the outside. The door clicked shut. Warmth closed back in around her, but the drop that ran from her eyes stung her still-cold cheek.
"Oh, dear, another blanket?"
Zara had barely been able to understand the old woman's Den accent when she'd first arrived, but now after a few weeks, it only took a bit of concentration to discern the words. She nodded – the old woman had as much trouble understanding her. A moment later, a heavy blanket was wrapped around her shoulders. Heavy against her back, it draped between her and the chair.
"Thank you."
"It's not really that bad, you know," said the woman. "At least it's not a white one."
Zara shook her head, confused. "A white what?"
"A white Day! Have you ever seen snow, dear?"
"No."
"Oh, you'll love it, you'll love it. But if you think this is cold..." She shook her head, already waddling back to the kitchen.
Zara looked back to the warm cup. She put her face over the steam, to warm her eyes and her cheeks in the heat of the... some sweet drink the old woman had made.
She took another sip of the drink and tried to swallow the disappointment she'd felt every time the doorbell had rung.
Harper...
"Zara, right ma'am?"
She looked up at the young soldier now standing beside her chair. He was so thin that his smile seemed to take up his entire face. She nodded, then looked back to the cup in her hands.
"Happy Day!"
"Happy Day," she mumbled as she'd done all evening.
"This is from your husband, ma'am."
A hand moved into her vision.
It held a narrow length of blue cloth.
Zara reached out. Her fingers brushed, gently – almost fearfully – the deep blue piece. She stroked the threads, thick and tightly woven and dyed without dilution – without even a trace of a dampening color – the shade of the sky just before it blackens for night. She drew her hand back, looked up at the smiling soldier.
Such a rich shade of the sacred color she had never seen, even on the altars of the Sky Reverends.
"Go on," said the soldier. "It's for you."
The thin hand pressed the piece into her fingers, and she took it.
It was a strip, no wider than two of her fingers and just long enough to go round her neck with a little frog clasp on the end. A necklace. The material was heavy, the threads thick, but so densely woven as to be smooth like silk. She squinted at it, but she could see no trace of the original material's color beneath the deep blue.
A chill wormed through her stomach.
Who on Skyland...? The money... the audacity!
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together to keep them from shivering.
Oh Harper... "Thank you."
"It's no problem, ma'am, I was headed back anyway." The chair beside Zara pulled back against the wood floor, and the soldier sat down.
She looked away, out the window, back to the outside. She looked up at the Sky. It was not her prescious blue, but a cold, blotched white-grey. The stories on Skyland waxed on about the great puffs of white cloud long ago that covere
d the Sky and brought rain. They were worshipped, entreated – glorious raiments of the Sky herself. But looking at them now, Zara couldn't help seeing them as anything but... cold. A white fleck hung in the air outside, floating on the wind. Another followed it. Then another.
It had begun to snow.
"Is he safe?" she asked the young soldier.
"Safe as he can be. We're taking good care of him. He'll be just fine, ma'am."
"It's Zara. Call me Zara."
"It's very nice to meet you, Zara. You can call me Wills. Your husband is doing really well. And we're all hoping to be out of the periphery before the next Hundred days pass. You'll see him in no time."
Zara nodded, but did not look at him. A chair on her other side scraped the floor. Somebody moved beside her. Another chair creaked. Glassware clinked in the kitchen. More flakes were falling outside the window. The shadow of a dozen people moved against the glass as the snow danced on the other side.
It was the tenth Tenth Day celebration.
While every Tenth Day the Infinite Space worshipped in silence and wailing, wordless song, when ten of these had passed – or every Hundreth Day – they gathered together to celebrate with gatherings filled with talk and food and laughter and, Zara had heard, even real songs with words.
The grandma's house was speckled with stars – on the table in between the dishes, in frames around the walls, on strings hung over the doorways. Even the figure-eight over the fireplace held a few folded paper stars in its curves.
A big metallic star – or Zara assumed it was supposed to be a star, it was more like a pointy ball of a hundred spears – hung in the center of the room from a hook in the ceiling, right over the long table. On the table itself, normally bare and polished wood, a long black cloth lay.
"Let's eat!"
A cheer went up from those gathered in the room. The old woman had waddled back out of the kitchen with a dish of meat in her hands, followed by a girl and a bony man as old as the woman but almost twice as tall with a smile to challenge the young soldier's. They each carried platters of food. More chairs scraped against the floor, and those who hadn't already sat down did so as the food was set on the table, and the hosts returned to the kitchen for more.
When it was all set down, the old man stood at the head of the table. He looked at the star-ball hanging above them.
"Every day is a day for the Infinite. But today we also remember that which is closer to home!"
Another cheer went up from around the table and the old man continued.
"But before we forget, let us join now for a moment in the silence of the Infinite Space."
He sat down, bowed his head; the others followed, and the silence fell.
Zara bowed her head with the rest but her eyes glanced up, flicking around to her fellow dinner guests. Across the table sat a woman with a blue scarf over her shoulders and blue trim on a white tunic. She had the black hair of the Skylanders, but the skin of her hands was smooth and fine, the Sky-colored trim of her sleeves unworn. A city woman. She looked towards Zara. For one second, their eyes met and the other woman smiled big before closing her eyes and bowing her head for the silence. Zara lowered her own eyes, but kept them open.
She looked down into her hand.
The blue cloth from Harper stared back up at her.
Oh my Sky, how did you get such a hue?
Author
Blythe, Aelius: (1987–)
North American scribe. Timid, nomadic. Female of the species H. sapiens.
Also wrote:
Stories About Things
World
CEASA
Ask
Richard
Skyland One Page 20