“You don’t need light?” Jake asked. He produced a battery torch from one of his innumerable pockets.
“I’ve been here before. Darkness doesn’t frighten me.” He breathed deeply of the stale and damp air.
Jake grumbled something as he flashed his light around the narrow landing and down the spiral stairs. “Watch your step, Gil. Those stairs look slick.”
“They are. I was about to warn you of the same thing. We will descend to below harbor level for a time. The path will be partially flooded. At low tide in midsummer it should be nearly dry.”
Another grunt from Jake. For a man who read so well and used words so easily, you’d think he could be more articulate.
“What are we looking for?” Jake asked as they stepped off the last stair.
“We have a ways to go first.” Gil started off on another long looping journey that crossed the main passageway several times. He’d never encountered any cave-dwelling creatures down here. He almost hoped they’d disturb a colony of bats, the more to confuse Jake and discourage him from repeating this journey on his own.
By the time they neared the back entrance to the archives, they were both soaked to the knee with slimy black water.
“Lieutenant . . . Jake, I know by this time that you are utterly trustworthy and loyal to Laudae Sissy.”
“I keep my promises. Oaths mean a lot to me.”
“So, I noticed. That is why I am willing to trust you, and no one else, with this knowledge.”
“No one? Not even Laud Gregor?”
“Not yet.”
“Then why show it to me?”
“Because Laudae Sissy will need you to know this when she encounters . . . certain mysteries in the burial caves. I trust you to feed her the information as she needs it. All at once, and she will dismiss it all.”
“It’s that important?”
“It is that important and so controversial as to be heresy.”
Jake’s throat apple bobbed as he swallowed deeply. And again.
“You could send us both to the executioner.”
“Only if you reveal this information to the wrong person at the wrong time. So I have your oath of secrecy?”
A long moment of silence. All the time, Jake’s eyes scanned the entire area, seeking, thinking, weighing the consequences and his options.
“This is so secret I have not even told the woman I consider my spouse.” By the name of the Seven he hoped Penelope never had to find out.
“I thought Temple forbade marriage among themselves.” Jake looked intensely curious.
“Some of us do form lasting, monogamous relationships. We raise our children in a loving home, we support each other through good times and bad, nurse each other through sickness, and rejoice together over life’s small miracles.”
“You just don’t talk about it. What about Laud Gregor? Does he know?”
“No, he does not. We go to great pains to make certain he doesn’t notice the family units inside his Temple. I am not the only one, believe me.”
“And you make certain family units don’t get separated in his constant rounds of rotation.”
“Precisely.” Gil suppressed a small smile. Laud Gregor was easy to manipulate when it came to rotations. Gil just had to judge when was the right time to present them.
“Then how did Gregor get to be HP? So many of you against his policies and all.”
“The Temple decided against marriage some generations ago. Laud Gregor finds it convenient to continue it. That way he doesn’t have to commit to anyone but himself. He doesn’t see a lot of what he doesn’t want to admit exists.”
“A tyrant in the making.”
“Laud Gregor is a good HP in most things. He’s able to look at many events and find patterns. He thinks beyond immediate gratification and simple solutions.”
“He’s a good politician. But is he a believer?” Jake asked.
As if faith were a prerequisite for ruling an empire.
“I believe that Laud Gregor is one of the faithful. At least he started that way.”
“Is that why you can’t trust him with this knowledge you are about to show me?”
“He will have to know eventually. But I will choose the time and place he discovers it.”
“Again I ask: why trust me? Why trust anyone with this knowledge?”
“Because I need to know that someone will know if anything happens to me. Now do you agree to absolute secrecy until Laudae Sissy needs to know, and then only as much as she can absorb at one time?”
“Agreed.” He said it at almost the same moment Gil saw acceptance in those wary eyes that saw all too much.
Gil opened the back door of the archives and stepped through. Jake followed him through the maze of boxes, crates, and shelves in silence. They reached a small open space in a far corner, the driest and most comfortable, where Gil had placed a reading chair and portable light. The fact that anyone had bothered to run electricity down here still amazed him.
“These documents are very old and fragile. There are no copies.” That was a lie. Gil had made two sets of copies and hidden them well in other parts of the old Temple. He’d sent a third copy to his parents in the far west with orders for them to secrete them deep in the burial caves, in a specific niche, beneath the two skeletons that resided there.
Jake scanned the pages quickly. “How long may I keep them?”
“I give you twenty minutes to read as much as you can. Then I have to replace them and take you back.”
With quiet efficiency, Jake began reading in earnest, not wasting time with questions or protests.
The minutes crawled by for Gil. He busied himself with organizing boxes nearby. Just as he was about to call a halt to Jake’s perusal, the lieutenant looked up. His hands trembled and he looked paler than usual in the harsh light. The acrid scent of fear sat on his skin.
“You have much to think about, Jake.”
“Laudae Sissy is right about one thing. This entire planet is sacred. Always has been and always will be.”
Gil bowed his head in acknowledgment. “I’ll take you back now.”
“Don’t bother with trying to get me lost again. I know how to navigate blind. The chamber beneath the High Altar should be just behind that wall. I wonder if there is secondary access.” Jake wandered over to the wall in question and peered at the mortar closely.
Gil felt ill. “If you return here, please do so secretly.”
“You can bet your ass I will. This information is going nowhere.” Unerringly, Jake led the way back through the maze and into the tunnels.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
"DAMN YOU, GIL, FOR TRUSTING me with this,” Jake grumbled under his breath. How could he concentrate on watching the steep mountain road for hidden assassins when all he could think about was the diary he’d read yesterday.
All of a sudden, he had too many answers to questions he’d never thought to ask before.
He closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them again, the colorful lizard sitting in his lap stared balefully up at him. Godfrey, the muncher, stretched clear across both of Jake’s legs with its tail dangling between the two seats in the front of the Temple limousine.
Godfrey rotated its bulbous eyes independently. Then as Jake watched, it faded from rusty brown and turquoise to a dark green that almost matched his black uniform.
“How does she find these critters?” he asked Bertie the driver.
“They find her.” He flicked a glance at the lizard and shuddered with distaste.
“But how did it get here? It’s not native to this continent.” From Jake’s reading, the beast originated on Far Continent. A few cropped up occasionally in the equatorial islands. The fact that it was running loose on Northern Continent at all meant there was seagoing traffic to forbidden zones.
Was Far Continent forbidden or just forbidding? He couldn’t remember.
He cursed Gil again, for giving him more to think about than his tired brain
could absorb. Discord! he needed to talk to Pammy.
Bertie shrugged. “Escaped from a zoo? Brought in illegally as a pet? I have no idea. But it found Laudae Sissy, and now it lives with her. Just like all the others. Strays and wounded alike. They know a haven when they see one.”
Sissy and Shanet cuddled and cradled a myriad of other animals in the back seat. The acolytes of both women, in the two cars following them, had even more, including Monster, the shaggy black dog. Neither Sissy nor Jake trusted anyone in the Temple to care for the menagerie, let alone allow them to live, if left behind. If released, any one of the animals could become food for a desperate family that hadn’t eaten meat in a year or more.
If Pammy could see him now. . . . Jake shook his head in dismay. When he’d signed up to be a spy, he never would have believed he’d end up babysitting Godfrey. The weasel, Milton, didn’t get along with Godfrey. And Godfrey didn’t like Milton any better. In the wild they were natural enemies. Milton could have ridden with the girls. Godfrey could have. Sissy wouldn’t dream of separating herself from her two rarest and most delicate creatures. So she had Milton. He had Godfrey.
He’d rather put up with fourteen giggling girls than Godfrey. Though the lizard was quieter. The girls treated him as one of their own, subject to pranks and pillow fights, and an easy touch for help with their lessons.
Godfrey dug twelve needle-sharp talons (his left hind foot was wrapped in a bandage to hide a maiming injury) into Jake’s legs, preparing to shift his considerable bulk to a more comfortable position.
“Delicate, my ass,” Jake mumbled to himself. Godfrey had talons as long as his palms and Milton had a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. Either one could tear him apart if he weren’t wearing inflatable gel pad armor within the layers of his uniform. The pads had strands of Badger Metal woven into them to prevent piercing that might let the gel leak or to mix with the catalyst that hardened it into overlapping scales that could stop most projectiles and dissipate energy weapons.
The Badger Metal in the weapons he carried and the uniform he wore would buy him a lifetime of ease in the CSS. How in all the hells did he find the formula out here in the middle of nowhere? He needed a live factory and not an endless cave system filled with dead bodies.
He needed Sissy to visit a factory, not burial caves.
He just hoped the niggling idea of a better solution for everyone was worth the risk and the time he put into it. For all he knew, the Marils could have launched a full-scale invasion of the CSS while he babysat a headstrong young woman, her seven acolytes, and her menagerie.
He’d almost welcome the attack after what he’d read yesterday.
“Jake?” Sissy tapped his shoulder.
He looked around, giving her his full attention.
“What is that rock formation? The different colored layers are so unusual.And look how they break at that odd angle and thrust upward.” She pointed to the cliff at their right.
“I can look it up in the library when we get to the Temple, My Laudae. But I believe the layers are caused by volcanic action over time. The break could be a fault line. One side of it went one way and the other the opposite during a quake,” he replied, dredging up some long forgotten geology lesson from high school. Damn, he should be piloting fighters or even cruise liners across the space lanes, not giving the HPS basic education.
“Lieutenant Jacob da Jacob,” Bertie said quietly when Sissy had settled down.
“Yes?”
“Could you speak to the Laudae for me?”
Jake’s body stiffened with alarm. Bertie had as easy a relationship with Sissy as anyone. “About what?” He set Godfrey alongside him, freeing himself to react to any threat the driver might point out.
“I . . . I’d rather not remain with Laudae Sissy at the burial caves.”
“We’re going to be there for weeks. We’ll need a driver to get to and from the local Temple and the nearest town . . .”
“You are qualified to drive. I checked.”
Drive fifteen different fighters through space.
Jake didn’t enlighten the man that his Harmony Military caste credentials were fake and this lumbering land yacht was beyond his capabilities.
“It’s just . . . that the caves make me nervous. My family never followed the practice of annual memorials among our ancestors. Best let the dead stay dead. Don’t mess with them. And now she is going to disturb them all, shift their bones around.” Bertie paled and began to sweat. “I’d like to get out at the next pass point and walk back to the last village.”
“Honoring our ancestors is one of the most basic and time-honored traditions.” Even back on Earth they had All Saints Day, preceded by the fun and nonsense of Halloween. Every human colony and allied world had some variation of the rituals to honor those who had died.
How a civilization honors its living is reflected in how they honor their dead. Jake had read that somewhere. He wished he could remember who’d said it now. Some long-dead president, he thought.
How had Harmony honored the dead of those who came before them? The original inhabitants.
“And my family does honor our dead. But from the safe distance of our homes, barred against intrusion. We pray for their safe and continued repose. We light candles and incense and ward every door and window and hole in the roof with charms. We do not disturb the dead,” Bertie insisted.
Jake wondered if this was a very old tradition on Harmony. Stay away from the caves and forget what really lies there.
Bertie slowed the car, seeking a place to pull off the road and stop.
Not very likely. The rutted dirt road was little more than an indentation between the multilayered wall to the right—a series of short terraces— and a very steep drop-off down to a churning river canyon on the left.
“Does the Laudae know how you feel, what you fear?”
Bertie shrugged as he braked and swerved around a pothole. The road had deteriorated the last ten kilometers. An arcing dust trail followed them, plastering the other two cars in grit.
Jake checked the rearview mirrors. He couldn’t see the other cars at all. The hairs along his spine stood up straight. If they got separated . . .
“Pull off the road, Bertie. We need to wait for the others to catch up.”
“Only if you let me get out and you continue driving.”
“I don’t care. I don’t like this. It doesn’t feel right. Are there other sects like your family that don’t believe in this mission?”
Maybe someone else had read Gil’s precious documents and needed to keep them secret in order to . . . to maintain power.
Bertie slowed to a stop. There wasn’t any place wide enough for the car to pull off, nor for another car to pass them.
It smelled like a trap.
“Many in the Professional caste feel that the custom of trekking to the caves every year is primitive, something to soothe the uneducated Workers . . .”
“But do they fear the dead like you do?”
“Some . . .”
Jake opened his door. It only gave him two handbreadths before it wedged into the two-meter-high terrace. He wiggled his way out and ran around to the other side where he didn’t have much more maneuvering room, but could at least get the door all the way open. The river valley looked to be nearly two kilometers below. He opened the back door anyway.
“Laudae Sissy, I need you to vacate the car immediately,” he ordered.
“Jake?” She looked pale and uncertain. Her breathing came in short and sharp gasps.
He handed her the spare inhaler he kept in his thigh pocket.
The moment she’d shot herself full of medications, he grabbed her arm and dragged her free of the car. He planted her feet a meter behind the car, then returned. “You, too, Laudae Shanet.”
“The animals . . .”
“Can fend for themselves.”
With the women safe and the animals gathering around Sissy of their own volition, Jake turned his attention to B
ertie. The driver gripped the steering wheel with both hands so tightly his knuckles turned blue.
“Bring the lizard, Bertie. We hike from here,” Jake ordered.
“If it’s all the same to you, Lieutenant, I think I’ll stay here and wait for the other car.”
“Nope.” Jake hauled the door open and faced the man. “You come with us and die at the hand of the executioner, or you stay here and die on my blade.” He held his dagger at the man’s throat.
“I had nothing to do with this, Lieutenant.” Bertie still held the steering wheel as if his life depended upon it.
Maybe it did.
“Nothing to do with what?” Jake nicked Bertie’s neck with the tip of the knife. Didn’t take much pressure to bring a bright drop of blood to the surface. A second drop pushed it out and formed a small trickle onto the grooved blade.
“Please, kill me quick.”
“Why should I give you that honor?” Jake pushed the knife a tad deeper. The trickle of blood became a rivulet.
“Jake?” Sissy asked from behind the car.
“Stay put, My Laudae. For the love of your life, stay right where you are.” He prayed that for once she obeyed him. She might be a little slip of a thing, bright, and inquisitive. But she was also stubborn and as bull-headed as he was himself.
“I think we should do as he says,” Shanet said quietly.
A bright flash of orange and brown the color of the dusty road told Jake that Godfrey had found his own way back to Sissy. He allowed a tiny morsel of relief to trickle into his system.
Failure was not an option. His life and mission depended upon keeping Sissy safe.
Dammit! He wanted to keep her safe. He couldn’t bear the thought of an assassin depriving the universe of the shining light that was Sissy.
“Tell me what is going to happen here,” Jake said quietly to Bertie.
“I . . . I don’t know the details.”
“Yet you volunteered to die with the High Priestess of Harmony rather than let her muck about with some old bones. Are you afraid of what she’ll find there?” Like proof that human life did not originate on Harmony.
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