by Kate Elliott
Charles Soerensen sat at his desk, staring out at the mud flats of Odys Massif that stretched for endless miles, as far as one could see from this tower and farther yet. While his companion spoke, Soerensen sat perfectly still, engrossed in the scene beyond. But Marco Burckhardt knew that Charles Soerensen listened closely and keenly to everything he had to report.
“…and while I was in Jeds, Dr. Hierakis isolated another of the antigenic enzymes in the native population that has been puzzling her. Which reminds me, this lingering illness that the Prince of Jeds is suffering is either going to have to get better or you’re going to have to kill yourself off and let your sister take over, or some invented son, once she can be fetched back from whichever damned place overseas you supposedly sent her to study. It’s been over two years since you’ve appeared publicly in Jeds, or even been downside at all.”
Charles reached out and with one finger rotated the globe of Earth suspended to the right of his desk a quarter-turn, revealing the Pacific Ocean. “Eighteen months. And in any case, I just inherited twenty years ago. We’ve got a while before we need a new prince down there.”
“If you say so. I think I’ll sail the coast up north from Jeds next. Northeast, that is, up the inland sea.”
A soft click sounded, barely audible, but both men stilled, and Marco turned expectantly toward the tiled wall opposite the huge open balcony that looked out over the tidal flats. A seam opened. A woman dressed in an approximation of Chapalii steward’s garb appeared.
“Visitors,” she said, low, and quickly. “The Oshaki, in from Earth. Hao Yakii Tarimin.”
Charles nodded. He did not stand, but Marco did. The woman backed out of the room. A moment later, Hao Yakii entered and paused on the threshold. Marco gestured for him to enter, and Yakii came forward and with a precise, deep bow, presented himself to Charles.
“Tai Charles,” he said in formal Chapalii. “I am thrice honored to be allowed into your presence, and I beg leave to thank you again for your generosity in letting my ship transport cargo and passengers through your demesne.”
Charles inclined his head the merest degree. He folded his hands together, one atop the other.
Marco echoed the folded hands. “The Tai-en accepts your thanks. Is there any news to report? Have you your manifest for the Rhui cargo?”
Yakii produced a palm-thin slate and offered it to Marco, and bowed again to Charles, retreating a step.
Marco studied it, puzzling out the letters of formal merchanter’s Chapalii. “Laboratory equipment,” he said in Anglais. “The usual kit for the good doctor. Forty boxes of bound paperbooks for dissemination. Silk bolts. Iron ingots. Spices. Some luxuries from home for the personnel. Pretty sparse for a cargo, I must say.” He glanced up. Charles rubbed his chin with his left forefinger. “Nothing missing that I can see,” Marco added in Ophiuchi-Sei, the only human language they were fairly sure the Chapalii had not learned, since its structure and cadences were decidedly and pointedly egalitarian.
Charles returned his gaze to the monotonous gray-green flats and stared, as if he saw something out there Marco did not. Yakii waited with Chapaliian patience for the duke to acknowledge the manifest or dismiss him. Finally, Charles reached out and turned the globe again, and rested his right forefinger lightly in the middle of eastern Europe.
“Is there also a message,” asked Marco in his painstaking but rather rough formal Chapalii, “from the Tai-endi Terese Soerensen?”
Marco saw the faint flush, the quiet creep of blue onto Hao Yakii’s skin before it melted and blended back into white. Whether Charles could detect the color shift in the reflection of the glastic pane he could not be sure.
“I received no message,” said Hao Yakii in a colorless voice, “from the Tai-endi Terese Soerensen to convey to the duke.”
Charles’s eyes narrowed slightly, scarcely noticeable, unless one knew him as well as Marco did.
“You may go, Hao Yakii,” said Marco.
Yakii bowed to the correct degree and retreated out of the room. Charles stood up.
“Get Suzanne,” he said. “I want her to take the next ship back to Earth.”
“Aren’t you overreacting?”
“Tess sends a message by every ship that comes through here via Earth. We agreed on that when she decided to study at Prague.”
“Still, Charles.” Marco walked to the desk and laid his palms flat on the satiny surface. “Wasn’t she in the last throes of writing her thesis? Damned linguists. I’ve studied Chapalii since before she was born, and she still speaks it ten times better than I do.”
Charles had pale blue eyes, deceptively mild eyes except when their full force was turned on an adversary. “When I have every reason to suspect that Chapalii Protocol officers arranged the accident that killed my parents? I don’t think I’m overreacting.”
Marco shrugged. “I’ll go.”
Charles considered. “No. Suzanne can handle this. I’ll have her send a bullet back to us from Earth once she’s there.”
“That’s pretty damned expensive.”
Charles laid a hand on the north pole of the Earth, gently, reverently. “Why the hell do you think I accepted this honor? She’s my only heir, and you know damned well we’re the only toehold humanity’s got to the chameleons’ power structure. Now.” He removed his hand from the globe, and his tone altered, softened, as he sat down again. “Is there anyone else from the Oshaki I am meant to see?”
Marco pushed off the desk and went to the transparent wall. The tide was coming in, a low, steady swell that overtook islands of reeds and swallowed them. On the horizon, the towers of Odys Port winked in the light of the setting sun. “The merchant, Keinaba.”
With a soft click, a door opened in the back wall. The woman came in and walked straight up to the desk.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she said. “Marco, haven’t I told you that turquoise blue is not your color?”
“You’re welcome to undress me, my love,” said Marco with a grin, “and show me something more appropriate to wear.”
“Fat chance, sweetheart. Here, Charles, this is from the Oshaki.” She dropped a thin slate down on the desktop. “No sooner did the captain hie himself out of here but his steward comes in with this message from the Chapalii merchant. Hao Yakii and house Keinaba’s regrets, but Hon Echido Keinaba has been unavoidably detained and will continue with the Oshaki to Chapal system. I can’t believe that anything in this galaxy would drag a merchant from that house off the chance we offered them to tie in with our trade and our metals foundries.”
Charles steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them. He did not look at the formal Chapalii script inscribed on the slate’s screen. The tide lapped at the wooden docks built below, stirring a rowboat and a gross of lobster cages tied to the pilings. “Let’s not take offense yet,” he said slowly. “Let’s keep channels open with the Keinaba house.” He glanced up, first at Marco and then at the woman. “Suzanne, I need you to go to Earth and find out why Tess didn’t send her usual message. What’s the next ship heading out that way? On second thought, commandeer one. Not the Oshaki, I think.”
Suzanne picked up the slate and keyed in a few quick commands. “Five days would be easy. But if you really want to pull rank, I can leave tomorrow.”
Charles nodded at the flats, shimmering, stilling as the tide settled and the last glow of the sun scattered out across the dull water. “Tomorrow,” he said.
Tess woke abruptly, to silence. She did not know how long she had slept. She sat up. Suddenly she heard two men arguing, fluid, foreign words, and a woman weeping, a constant undercurrent to their angry exchange. The conversation ended abruptly, but the weeping kept on, fading at last as if the woman had walked out of reach of Tess’s hearing. It was utterly, unnaturally quiet.
Tess groped forward and opened the flap that led into the front half of the tent. Light streamed in here, dappling her clothing, which was neatly folded next to a pouch of food and a tin pot of wat
er. Quickly, she dressed, drank, and ate, and then ventured outside.
The sun lay low along the far rise, but she could tell by the quality of light that it was morning. The camp was empty. Tent flaps stirred in the dawn breeze, but not one single figure moved along the trails beaten down in the grass between the tents. Movement caught her eye, up along the rise, and she saw two figures disappear over the height, edged by the glare of the rising sun. She followed them.
The tribe had gathered in the shallow valley on the other side of the rise. They stood in shadow, the sun’s light creeping down toward them, and Tess stopped at the height, staring down, aware that some alien, serious ritual was taking place. To her left, she saw another solitary figure crest the rise into sunlight and then descend again into shadow. She recognized him by his walk, and the dark line of his beard: the man who had found her—Bakhtiian. The air, heavy with dew, felt soft and cold on her cheeks. She watched him descend, for a moment seduced from her other thoughts by the grace of his walk and bearing. Then she winced and went down to the right, where she could see and hear the proceedings but not be part of them.
The tribe stood silently in a rough semicircle. A baby cried and was hushed. One man, fair-haired, middle-aged, dressed in black, stood by himself beyond the crowd. He stared straight ahead—although the sun rose directly into his eyes—and his stance was stiff.
The crowd parted soundlessly to let Bakhtiian through their ranks. His stride was unhurried and smooth. Drops of dew glistened on the tops of his boots and on the hilt of his saber. He halted in front of the single figure.
The silence spread beyond them so that Tess was not aware even of the birds calling or the wind’s slow breath on her cheeks. Bakhtiian spoke. What he said had a rhythmic quality, like a spell or a poem, and it wrapped around Tess like a snake so that when he ceased speaking she pulled her arms close in against her chest. A single voice, unsure and weak in the silence left by his speech, answered him, followed by several more in a set way that made her realize that this was some kind of ceremony.
Bakhtiian addressed the man standing apart. He responded with one word. A second question, another single word. A third; the same word again. He was a pale figure, this man, alone against the blank sky and the endless grass. No one spoke. A high call came from above, and a lone bird swooped low, rose into the wind, and flew toward the sun.
Bakhtiian moved slightly, drawing his saber. A sigh spread through the crowd as though strewn by the wind. The point of the blade rested on the man’s forehead. The world seemed to stop, its only motion the movements of Bakhtiian. Tess could not look away. He looked to the sky and spoke a short invocation to the expanse above. Something awful was about to happen, but it was too late to run away.
In a kind of ghastly slow motion, the more terrible for the effortless beauty of his movement, he drew his saber up to his left shoulder, stepped left, and cut back to the right. Without meaning to, Tess clapped her hands over her eyes. Forced them down, only to see the man, covered with his own blood, collapse into a grotesque heap on the ground. Bakhtiian stepped forward, dropped the saber on the man’s body, and turned away and walked, without a word, back toward the camp.
There was a brief, horrified hush. People moved back to let him through and stared after him, hands hiding the sudden buzz of whispering.
Not even aware of her path, Tess fled—from the camp, the crowd, the dead man. She huddled in a little hollow, unable to weep or retch or rail, unable to do anything but bury her head against her knees and shudder, over and over, her arms clenching her knees so tightly that it felt as if bone was touching bone. How long she stayed like this she did not know.
After a time she began taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly, inhaling the musty sweetness of the grass. She rocked back and forth, relaxing her clenched muscles one by one until at last she could shut away the ghastly picture of the man collapsing, of his blood staining the grass—
She took another breath, let it out. Her neck ached. She lifted her head carefully, as if it were so delicate that the slightest jar would break it, and almost screamed. Bakhtiian stood not twenty paces away, watching her.
Chapter Three
“If God had not created yellow honey, they would say that figs were far sweeter.”
—XENOPHANES OF COLOPHON
FAR ABOVE, A BIRD dove toward the earth, a bundle thrown from some high spot to be dashed to pieces against the ground. Abruptly it broke its plummet and jerked upward, wings spread. Tess’s hand was on her throat.
Bakhtiian walked toward her, slowly, each step measured and even. A saber swayed at his hip.
Tess forced herself to lower her hand and, knowing that it is always best to face your fears directly, she stood up—slowly, so as not to startle him—and looked him straight in the eye. He looked away; that fast, like a wild creature bolting; then, deliberately, he returned her gaze. His hesitancy gave her courage, and she found that her heart was no longer beating so erratically.
“I suppose you think us savage,” he said in a low voice.
He spoke such faultless Rhuian, enhanced rather than marred by a melodious accent, that it took her some full, drawn-out moments to even wonder why it ought to matter to him. “My God.” It was the only response that came to hand.
“Sonia says you come from Jeds.” She simply stared at him; when she did not reply, he went on. “I studied there myself, at the university, some fifteen years ago. I was very young.” He paused. “But even then I thought the architecture of the university, set out around such a fine square, was particularly remarkable.” The wind stirred the scarlet silk of his shirt. It reminded her of blood.
“Savage is too kind,” she said hoarsely. Then, realizing that she had just insulted a man who could kill her as easily as he had his previous victim, she cast round desperately for a safer haven. “Anyone who’s been in Jeds knows that the university is unique because its buildings are set in the round.”
His expression, unrevealing, did not change. “I’ve seen men killed in more brutal ways in Jeds. And for less compelling reasons. You’re pale. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“Go away.” She deliberately turned her back on him. Five breaths later, she realized what she had done, and she whirled back. But he was gone.
“Tess.”
She bolted right into Yuri.
“Tess. Don’t be scared of me.”
She could not help herself. She gripped his shirt in her fists and sobbed onto his shoulder. He stood very still. After a bit she stopped crying and stepped a half pace away. She dried her eyes on her hand, feeling like a fool, and looked at him. “Your shirt is all wet.”
“I don’t mind.” He stared at her so earnestly that she looked away. “You are sad.”
“Oh, Yuri, that was awful.”
“It’s true that he got a more merciful death than he deserved. My mother and the other—elders—will be angry with Ilya now, I can tell you that.”
“Good Lord,” she murmured, utterly bewildered. “How could that be called merciful? How was he supposed to die? No, don’t tell me that.” She lapsed into silence.
“Tess, he had to die. He had broken the gods’ law. Otherwise his—crime, is that the word?—would have made the whole tribe suffer.”
“What did he do?”
Yuri looked shamed, and he hesitated, as if he was afraid to confess the magnitude of the man’s wrongdoing. “He shot a whistler.”
“A whistler?”
“It’s a bird.” Wrung from him, the admission seemed both anguished and, to Tess, utterly incongruous.
“A bird.” What kind of people had she fallen in with?
“He shouldn’t have been out hunting with women’s weapons anyway, and he was three times a fool to shoot into a thicket. He should have flushed out the game.” Yuri shrugged. “But it’s done now. The gods must have guided his hand. It was a just execution.”
He spoke so matter-of-factly that Tess was appalled, and not a little frighten
ed. “Yuri. You’ll tell me, won’t you, if I’m about to do something that would offend, that would break your gods’ law?”
Now he looked shocked. “You don’t think we punish children? Or those who act in ignorance? We’re not savages!”
“No, no, of course not. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” But Yuri could not maintain outrage for longer than a moment. He grinned at her consternation. “Well,” said Tess, “I appreciate you coming to find me. Did Bakhtiian send you?”
“Ilya? Why would he send me? No, Sonia did.” Abruptly he blushed. “She thought, if you were upset, that you might want—a man’s comfort.” The constrained tone of his voice left no question as to what Sonia meant by a man’s comfort.
For an instant, unable to look at Yuri, Tess was too embarrassed to speak. But then, glancing up at him, she realized that Yuri was far more embarrassed than she was. Their gazes met. Yuri covered his mouth with his hand, and they both laughed.
When Tess tentatively laid a hand on his arm, they sobered. “I don’t—I don’t need a lover, Yuri. Not right now. But a brother…” Had Charles received her computer slate already? Only to send a message to Jeds and find that she had never arrived? “I could use a brother, right now.”
He smiled, looking both relieved and honestly pleased, and grasped her hand with his. “Then I will be your brother, Tess. I would far rather be your brother, because a woman’s lovers come and go, but her brother she keeps always.” He studied her a moment, serious. “But you’d better wash your face. I’ll take you to the stream.”