by Patty Jansen
"This is my younger brother Taerzo and his wife Calliandra, with their sons Miruhan and Iztho and their daughter Aleyo."
A thin middle aged woman came in followed by the young woman who had been in the hall, who was perhaps younger than Izramith had guessed.
"The lady Mikandra's mother and sister, Liseyo."
Izramith's head was reeling by now. All these people in one family? This was not just a Trading family. These people were a powerhouse of Traders.
And then an older woman came into the doorway.
"I am going to be inconvenient and leave you," she said in stiff Trader Coldi. "My attendance is required at the council."
"This is my mother, Isandra," Braedon said.
Izramith met the older woman's gaze across the room. The family matriarch. She came into the room and eyed Izramith up and down. "So Daya has sent you to protect us, right? I hope you guards are really as tough as everyone says."
Braedon said, "Mother, she's just arrived. Can't you at least say welcome, or something nice?"
"Nice words are stinking salves on festering wounds."
Coldi proverb. Izramith knew that one. "Neyma Palayi." A historic warmongering Chief Coordinator of Asto. She gave Braedon a determined look.
"Hmm," his mother said, clicking her tongue. "If she knows her Coldi proverbs, she's got to be good."
"Mother!"
The woman laughed and as her eyes met Izramith's, they twinkled with mirth.
Izramith said, "Sure. The leader who knows the back streets of the town, knows the people who live in it."
The woman added, "Zhyara Ezmi, brother of Xiya."
"War and peace are nothing more than rearranging priorities."
"Thiya Palayi, Chief Coordinator of Asto."
Taerzo spread his hands. "Can you stop it, you two?"
Izramith said, "Your friends are the ones who stay after the end of the party."
Isandra frowned. "Hmm. Can't remember that one. You win. Anyway, I have to go now, or be late." She vanished into the hall.
Braedon frowned at her. "Who is that one by? I don't remember that either."
"It's something my superior used to say. It only needs another nine hundred and ninety-one uses to be eligible to become a proverb."
"I heard that," Isandra came back from the hallway. "That's cheating." Then she squinted. "By the way, is that an old Mirani army shirt you're wearing?"
Was it? "I don't know… I bartered it with a shopkeeper…" But it made far too much sense that the shops would have gotten their hands on old stock left by the occupying forces.
Damn, the family had fled from the Mirani army and here she was wearing an old uniform? Was that why the shop owner had been happy to let her have two shirts for a bit of work?
That was utterly… embarrassing. Was there anything she could do right in this place?
A big-bosomed older woman had come into the room wheeling a trolley that had carafes of old drinks, cups and a few plates of food. She proceeded to put these on the table and talk to the family, scolding one of the boys who ducked under her arm to grab something off the plate. He giggled while running out the door.
"As I said, my brother's sons are rascals in need of discipline," Braedon said.
His younger brother laughed. "Ha. We'll see how you do if you have kids."
"If." Braedon glared at his brother. "Ever."
Everyone settled around the table with a drink and a few sweets from the tray. Izramith sat next to Mikandra, tall and elegant, with her back straight. Taerzo's woman sat opposite her with the baby girl, who had taken to stuffing cake in her mouth with both hands. Her eyes were huge and blue, and stared unashamedly at Izramith, while casting more dubious glances at Wairin, next to her.
She was so incredibly cute. And then a painful thought: her nephew would never have a loving family like this one.
Chapter 14
Braedon called for silence and all faces around the table turned serious. The twins scurried out of the room, whispering and carrying a supply of cake.
Braedon began. "You will have gathered that these people are my family and the ones who will be at the head of the parade and will have to be protected during the event. As Daya already told you, there has been a worrying development overnight.
"We've been taking part in an experiment run by the Trader Guild where our hub communicates with a communication satellite owned by the Guild, which accesses the Exchange network through its own automated node. The purpose of this is to increase security, enable encrypting of transmissions and in no small part, to alleviate the ever-growing strain on the civilian network, a lot of which is generated by Traders.
"Ever since we've set this up this satellite connection, there has been interference on the frequency. Clearly, someone else in town is using the range and not aware that we're using it as well. The Guild has not advertised its activities, so in some way this doesn't surprise me."
"Lemme guess," Dashu said. "You are using a frequency higher than the range covered by the Exchange."
"Correct. The Trader Guild is very specific with frequencies we can use. All day yesterday we had problems with interference. For most of the day, we heard just noise. The signals were regular bursts of noise, weren't very strong and we thought initially that we were intercepting an automated satellite beacon.
"Anyway, last night, we intercepted a clear, unencrypted signal." He gestured to the wall. Another Mirani man, this one a Nikala with golden curls, operated the controls at the hub. There was the hissing of static and then a clear man's voice spoke a few sentences in Mirani, before the transmission was cut off.
"Thanks, Jocassa," Braedon said.
The man smiled in a jovial no worries kind of way.
Everyone in the room had gone quiet. Izramith met the lady Mikandra's eyes across the table. The expression on her face chilled her. The lady's mother held her hands clasped to her chest.
Braedon continued, "For those who don't understand Mirani, he said, If you marry the traitor, I will come after you and hunt you down wherever you are. You cannot hide from me." His eyes met Izramith's and Izramith turned to Mikandra.
"Your father?"
Mikandra nodded, her face tight. Her sister let out a tiny sob.
"My father is high councillor under Nemedor Satarin. He… has changed a lot since I first left home. It started when I was accepted into the Trader Academy and he didn't agree with it. He didn't agree with women becoming Traders and he didn't agree with Traders. He made threats, he said he'd never pay for any of my education, he said I was ungrateful. I left anyway, and lived in Barresh for a while, and while I was gone, Mother and Liseyo also left him. He blamed Mother for my stubbornness, for failing to give him a son, for failing to raise us as slaves to the men of the family, for…" Her voice had grown louder as she spoke, and now she had to stop and swallow.
"I still don't think he's a bad man." Liseyo wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. "He just… wanted to care for us in a way we didn't want to be cared for."
Mikandra continued in a lower voice, "He is angry. He blames us for ruining his reputation. And he cannot stand that I've completed my course and am proving him wrong with every day that I live."
"He never stop," her mother said in heavily accented Coldi. "He hurt, he hit, he scream." She shivered visibly.
There was a brief silence in which it felt like a cold breeze went through the room. Izramith shivered. Her family might have been uncaring, but at least neither of her parents had ever hurt her.
"I hate to say it about my future father-in-law, but Asitho Bisumar is bad news," Rehan said.
"How likely is he to act on this threat?" Izramith asked.
"More likely than he's ever been," Mikandra said. "It seems like he has gone completely mad with anger. It's like… I don't know my father anymore. He was never a very warm or understanding person, but this…" Her face looked haunted.
"What would he be likely to do?"
"Oh, it woul
dn't be just him doing things. He's Nemedor Satarin's second and he has many people at his disposal. He's probably already behind all the things that have happened to us over the past year."
"What are those things?"
Braedon asked, "Didn't Daya tell you the circumstances of our departure from Miran?"
"He only said that you'd left and it wasn't voluntary."
Braedon snorted. "You can say that again. They would have killed us given half a chance. They almost did kill Rehan." Braedon's expression went distant in a way that gave Izramith the chills.
"We woke up in the middle of the night, and a mob was in the yard. They set fire to our house. We were trying to save ourselves and the children, while trying to fight back and escape the house. We couldn't find Mother, so Rehan went back into the house to look for her. The mob was throwing flaming torches on the roof and we couldn't do anything except run.
"The house was completely burned. Ever since, the Mirani council has tried everything to disown us. We have only recently tried to retrieve some of our possessions from the ruins of our house, but looters had been through the site and stolen everything they could clean and sell. We found some of our tableware for sale in the second-hand markets as collectable trophies. The Mirani council is pressuring us to sell the site, but we are not going to give in to them. We're not selling the office in Miran either. While we own the site in the middle of the Endri quarter and the office, they are nervous, because we're a Foundation family and we have every right to return to Miran. Most likely, they are keen to shut us up, because we offer a way in for people wanting to influence Miran. But they try to sabotage everything we do."
"We probably can't use the new satellite connection anymore now that they have access to it," Taerzo said. "It worries me what other conversations they've listened to and what they know about us."
"We've had deal-poachers grab a substantial portion of our contracts," Mikandra added, her voice angry. "There is no way anyone would have known about those deals if they didn't have access to the Trader system. They found out about the deals, went in, and undercut our price. Goods went missing from warehouses and never turned up. We've had aircraft damaged, family members harassed."
"The lady had her apartment broken into at Guild Headquarters," Rehan said. "They never stole anything, but went through all of our documents, most likely looking for entry codes."
Izramith asked, "Did you ever catch any of these people?"
Braedon said, "No, but they'll be hired muscle, sent by our ex-colleagues from the Mirani Chapter of the Guild or people sent by Nemedor Satarin, or both. Because we support free trade in Miran."
Rehan added, "They've probably been lying in wait and getting into position for this wedding parade, waiting to strike at the heart of what we're about. I am the family's heir in absence of our oldest brother, and I have taken the biggest Trading business of the entire Guild out of Miran into a town Miran doesn't think deserves the business." His voice vibrated with anger.
The biggest Trading business of the entire Guild… That rankled with her. Did he have an inkling of how arrogant he sounded? Izramith used her detached guard voice. "What do your enemies actually want? Simply harass you and make your life miserable or is there a specific reason?"
Rehan missed the sarcasm in that remark. He said, "Other than to shut us up—which we never will—we know what they're after. It's the reason they looted our house in Miran and turned over every burnt scrap and the reason they've been trying to break into our house here. Mikandra?"
The lady dug under the neckline of her tunic and pulled out a finely-made silver chain with dangling on it a stone. A very plain and not particularly pretty river stone. A little silver eyelet was fastened at the top where the chain went through and a band of silver went around the widest point. There was something inscribed on the silver, but it was too far away for Izramith to read, and was probably in Mirani anyway.
"The Foundation stone," Rehan said, and there was pompous tone to his voice. "There used to be five of these, each belonging to one of the Foundation families, but the other families all mis-used their right at some point, and their stones were taken. This is the only one still in the hands of the original family. If the rightful holder of the family's council seat comes into the council wearing this, he has the right to veto any council decision."
A single stone with all that power? And Rehan had said he has the right? What was it with the pre-occupation of governments on this backward planet to leave women out of their decision-making? "That's rather…" Silly came to mind, but she didn't think he would appreciate that. "Uhm… If this particular law bothers the Mirani council, why don't they just change it?" That seemed a lot easier than trying to steal the stone.
"It's not a law. It's written in the Foundation agreement."
Oh. Did that make a difference?
"The Foundation agreement is thousands of years old. It is the basis and lifeblood of Miran. No one can change it."
Right.
And this evil enemy of theirs was going to hold himself to these strange and archaic rules while illegally pursuing the family? That made no sense to her whatsoever. Were they seriously willing to murder people and start a war over something as ridiculous as a river stone?
And she had been thinking that the war in Indrahui was senseless and stupid.
Good grief.
"One thing I don't understand: if this… stone is what they want, why would they try to steal it during the parade? There will be a lot of attention on you."
"It's not just about the stone, but about everything it represents, and everything we represent. They won't steal the stone, but they'll kill those who can legitimately claim its powers. Which would be me, primarily."
Oh, the pompous arse. "And if that's what they were planning, why should they warn you?"
Rehan frowned.
"By sending you that message. Professionals would never let their subjects know that they're listening or that they're being targeted. They would not warn of a potential strike. They would carry it out. Warnings are for amateurs and politicians."
And she was reasonably certain that the fact that because the warning was delivered by Mikandra's father, this meant that there wouldn't be an attack, or at least not from that direction.
This could be a diversion for another planned action or a front for something else.
"Could you possibly play that recording again?" she asked. Something had bothered her about it.
Rehan said, "Sure. Jocassa?"
The man pressed a few buttons and the Mirani voice again sounded through the room.
Izramith listened with her eyes closed to concentrate on the sound.
"Is there anything we're missing?" Braedon asked.
"I'm not sure. Let's say that in my… work, I'm used to listening to things I can't see, either over the airwaves or because my colleagues wear face covering. Two things stand out about this recording. It's not spontaneous. It sounds like a pre-recorded threat."
Mikandra was nodding on the other side of the table. "He's reading this out."
"Also, the source of this transmission is not far from here. They don't use the satellite, and they probably have been listening in to your other conversations."
"That's just fucking great," Rehan said. He rose from his seat and started pacing around the room. "That means we have to return to using the Exchange, and it isn't secure either. The Guild let us take part in the trial because we needed secure communication. Now what are we going to do? Send fucking couriers for every single message?"
"Whatever else you do, I'd like you to keep using this system."
He turned around and glared at her as if she had gone mad.
"Pretend you don't realise that they're listening and let us set up a tracking scanner to see if we can see where it comes from."
Chapter 15
Eris and Wairin stayed behind in the house to set up the logging equipment, and because they were needed if the group was to sta
rt on the audit of the guesthouse, they decided to delay that expedition until tomorrow.
They went back to the security room in the council where Izramith spent some time staring at Dashu's lists of people confirmed to be in the guesthouse. She studied the recordings of conversations made by guests, but they were all pretty ordinary messages to family or friends or minor business transactions, expressions of interest in work positions, that sort of thing. Insanely boring stuff that almost put her to sleep. There wasn't a huge amount of communication. She had thought that it was odd for such a large place to have so little activity. Was it really because many of the guests were poor? They did have money to travel here in the first place, after all. Or did Barresh pay the fares for any who wanted to come and work for them, as they had paid hers?
Izramith rubbed her face. Her eyes felt scratchy from having had so little sleep.
Loxa touched her arm.
"You're tense. You should come with us after work. We know a nice place to go for a swim. You should come with us and relax."
Izramith made some non-committal response. A swim sounded nice, but swimming involved taking off her clothes. It meant showing her scars. She was officially still in active service, so her scars were only to be seen by other guards. More importantly, this whole association business worried her to no end. Clearly, Loxa and Dashu both expected something that she didn't know how to give and she had enough of pretending to go along with it. She had no intention of finding out if there was any truth in the rumours that relationships in associations involved intimacy. Dashu's greeting this morning had been uncomfortable enough. She didn't like being touched. She didn't like public intimacy and certainly not with another woman.
They could all fuck off as far as she was concerned.
Dashu and Loxa sat next to each other facing the table with all of Dashu's equipment controls, talking and laughing with each other in low voices.
Damn it.
She was hot, she felt sick. She was angry.