by Sarah Zettel
Gov snorted. “It will take the embassy staff three hours.”
“Perivar and I can open a channel for you in one hour,” said Kiv. I will talk to Ere, but not in front of a Si-Tuk.
Gov swung four eyes toward Kiv and Kiv saw the tremor in the stalks and the way his teeth showed through this slit of his open mouth. Gov did not like the mention of Perivar. He did not like Kiv. He did not forget that Kiv should have been his property and his anger burned to see Kiv acting independently with the support of his free children. Kiv knew it with a searing certainty, and found time to wonder if Ere had known it too.
“You have bought time, Kivere,” said Gov. “What do you intend to do with it?”
Kiv stiffened his spine. “Find out if Perivar is willing to come work in our home,” said Kiv. “We need human contacts. Perhaps it is time we hired some.”
Gov closed his eyes. “We could never give your kind a finger’s length.”
“No,” agreed Kiv quietly.
“Go open the channel then,” said Ji, and there was a hint of approval in his voice. “We will be ready in one hour. The Voice will tell the Vitae that they will have to wait until we have official word from the Emissary’s Council to make this contract with you.”
“Thank you, Emissaries all.” Kiv folded his arms respectfully and turned himself and Ere all the way around to leave the room.
You can give my kind a finger’s length, just be careful which finger’s length it is.
Frustration seethed inside Paral as he climbed back into the transport. Ordeth wasn’t even looking at him, and he was glad, because he knew his face betrayed his mood. She was speaking softly into her torque. Her disk was still in place in her ear, so the signal wasn’t going very far. The children waited in the side seats, doing very good imitations of Ambassadors. Paral didn’t know how she got them off her ship, and he didn’t really want to. All he wanted to know was how he was going to be able to tell Caril something other than that he had failed.
“Thanks for the news,” Ordeth said. She tapped her disk twice and turned to Paral. The transport’s internal lights turned her skin a sickly yellow. “You’re going to have to get online to Basq. The station’s pinpointed Stone in the Wall.”
“Then we should go after her.” Paral reached for the control boards.
Ordeth snatched at his hand. “With the children? It’s bad enough we risked them away from the ship. You’re being too open, Paral.”
He yanked his hand away, amazed and infuriated by the affront. “Too open to whom? Monsters and babies! It’s time to stop hiding ourselves.” He rubbed his wrist where she’d grabbed it. “Isn’t that what the Imperialists are all about?”
“The Imperialists have only made it this far by slipping through the cracks,” she hissed at him. “When we have a stable power base of our own, then you can play petty dictator to your heart’s content!” She stopped and visibly pulled herself back. Whether from her own sense of propriety or from what she saw in his eyes, Paral couldn’t tell. “Let Basq pick the artifacts up. Uary will get a chance to study them and we’ll know what we need.”
“And so will the Assembly.” He stared at the blackened windscreen. “No.”
“And if you don’t report in, you’re going to have the Witness really wondering about you,” she pointed out coolly. “You can’t tell me she doesn’t already have the satellite data.”
Paral was silent for a moment. “All right.” He bowed his head and stared at his hands on his lap.
Think, he ordered himself. There’s still got to be a chance.
“It’s possible that Basq won’t be able to hold on to Stone in the Wall,” he said, looking up at Ordeth again. “She has a resistance to confinement, and he doesn’t know where she’s headed yet…” He waited for confirmation.
“Not unless you tell him,” replied Ordeth.
“All right. We’ll send him after her, but we’ll make sure that there’s no one to receive her if she reaches her destination.”
Ordeth squinted like she was trying to see through his skull. “What are you thinking?”
“I am thinking it is not right that the Shessel can block the Reclamation. Is there anyone else here who can help us?”
“Maybe five in the division, if I ask them.” Ordeth sat very still, just as she was supposed to. “Paral…you are not thinking with care here.”
He matched her properly immobile expression. “The time for caution is past, Ordeth. Long past.”
For the thousandth time, Aria’s hand strayed to the mouth of her belt pouch and for the thousandth time she forced it away.
I know enough. Nameless Powers preserve me, I know enough to read a sign and get off a bus.
But thinking was hard and reading was slow and the stones would make it so much easier. She’d been using them to arrange her thoughts every single night since she got to the labs.
Which was the problem. She’d gotten used to their help. She’d gotten to like it. She leaned her cheek against the cool window and watched the strange, patchwork city pass. Clusters of buildings squatted in a spread of untamed meadow, or towered over groves of tangled trees. Only the razor-straight roads and their flanking walkways connected the knots of habitation.
Her mother had warned her that if she defied the injunction to reserve the stones for the needs of the Nameless or the Servant, the Powers would reclaim her name and with it her will and free mind.
Iyal and her friends would have called it assimilation and addiction. Aria simply called it dangerous, because what it was really stealing was her confidence. If she lost that now, she lost everything.
Did I type the destination in right? Should check. Her hand dropped onto the pouch. Should check the sign, not the stones! She peered at the display that took the place of a window in a hand-navigated vehicle. The third stop on the list was 32-35 Old Quarter. Yes. That was Perivar’s home. She sat back in the cradling seat and tried to relax. She was on her way. Wherever the Vitae were, they were not here.
Yet.
She rubbed the backs of her hands. I should have known the Nameless would never let me get away with this so easily. They will not tolerate their people abandoning their Realm. However it came to be, we are not like the Skymen. We are not free like they are.
But this doesn’t mean I surrender, do you hear? I don’t. She felt her muscles begin to sag as for a moment her weariness overwhelmed her. But it does mean that once I get home I have a whole new fight on these hands.
The bus eased itself to a halt. Aria shifted impatiently in her seat. Skymen, who didn’t have to worry about night storms and cold, never seemed to go to sleep. The sun was poised to vanish under the low, straight horizon, and the bus was still almost full of travelers. No wonder they used so many different tricks to divide their days up. They didn’t care about the rhythm of the world around them.
The bus raised the doors nearest the small block of empty seats and Aria automatically looked to see who was getting on. Her heartbeat skipped wildly. A pair of Vitae climbed aboard. Somebody gagged. Somebody spit and somebody else started murmuring as if in awe. Aria could not take her eyes off the scarlet-and-white figures, even to bow her head and scrunch backward in her seat.
The Vitae did not take the nearest empty seats. Instead they picked their way down the central aisle until they stood beside her. The sound of rustling cloth and shifting weight came from all directions, but not from the Vitae. They simply stood in the aisle with their attention fastened on Aria. Their bodies didn’t even sway as the bus started into motion again.
One of the two was her original captor, the one Eric called Basq. The second was rounder and shorter. The round one might even have been a woman, but there was no way to be sure, even though she was close enough for Aria to see the open pores under her eyes.
Basq took one of the empty seats and keyed a new destination into the bus’s list. Aria didn’t recognize the address. It showed up between the seventh and eighth stop on the list, which
only meant it was on the way to somewhere else.
“The laws of this planet have acknowledged our ownership of your body,” said Basq. He said it evenly and with no effort to keep his voice down. Aria’s throat tightened. It didn’t matter what anybody else heard. Even without her help, the Vitae had learned the language of the Realm. With a garbled accent and mangled tenses, but there was no mistaking it.
“Wherever Zur-Iyal has sent you will not receive you.”
Aria said nothing. They were the center of attention for all the other passengers, but none of them had moved. The Vitae could pick her up bodily and haul her out of the bus and they still wouldn’t move. Here, the Vitae were the Nobles and, like them or hate them, very few would be seen to act openly against them. Aria could not look for help from any of these strangers. Then she remembered the sound of spitting from the back of the bus.
But neither can they.
“Wipe your destination from the list, Aria Stone,” said the Round One.
Aria spread her hands flat on her thighs. “Maybe you can take me away with you,” she said. “Maybe you can destroy those the Nameless have sent to rule the Notouch and claim the Realm for yourselves, but I’ll be dead and drowned before I’ll help you do it.”
The Vitae stayed silent for a moment. Aria saw Round One’s lips move minutely, as if she were working out what Aria had just said. When she finally got it, her mouth stiffened into a straight line. Aria felt her own mouth twist into a smile.
The destination at the top of the list flashed and a chime sounded. The bus slowed to a halt. The doors opened.
Aria yanked the cattle prod off her belt and shoved the tip against the Round One’s hand. The Vitae screamed as the shock hit. Aria dived out the open door.
“Aunorante Sangh!” Basq snarled.
Her shoes hit the pavement at the same time the words hit her ears and she nearly fell. The strange feel of this place could still rob her of her balance all too easily. She started to run. If she could keep upright, she could nearly outpace the bus itself.
The artificial lights the Kethran loved robbed the evening of its sheltering shadows and turned it gold and scarlet, pink and grey. Her only chance at safety was distance between her and the Vitae. Blurred faces jumped in and out of her line of vision. The weird light confused her eyes. A shoulder banged against her and she toppled to the ground. Hands touched her and she jabbed the prod at them. Shouts and curses she didn’t have time to understand whirled around her.
Aria scrambled to her feet and staggered into a fresh run. Already her lungs burned from trying to suck down enough thin air to keep her going. Her muscles barely noticed the effort of running now, but they would when she stopped.
Aria ducked around a corner, and then another, not trying to maintain any kind of sense of direction, just trying to get out of sight.
Stars swam in front of her vision and solid blackness began to creep in around the edges. Aria stumbled to a halt and leaned against a carved stone fence that bordered a flower bed. She wheezed and gasped, trying to drag enough air into her dry lungs to clear her vision.
Blast Kethran. Blast the Vitae. Blast my ambitions and blast the Nameless for forcing them on me.
When her head stopped spinning, Aria raised her eyes. The bright white lights and red-and-gold street signs proclaimed that this was one of the quarters where the First Families lived. In the middle of the Amaiar Division, it was close enough to the entertainment and stores that they didn’t have to take buses to get out and busy themselves with their fellows. In her work-stained clothes, she’d quickly be spotted and told to prove she had a need or a right to be here.
Already, faces were turning toward her with quizzical and hostile glances. But there were no Vitae either in front of her or behind her.
They’re not quite ready to chase me through the streets yet, obviously. Aria knuckled her bleary eyes.
“All right now, Stranger.”
Aria jerked her hands away from her eyes. A yellow-jacketed man walked through the gate in the fence and approached her until she could smell the stink of peppers on his breath and see the glint of authority in his brown eyes.
Aria levered herself away from the fence and had to stop herself from dropping reflexively onto her knees.
“You sick?” he asked. “Been robbed?”
“No, sir,” she croaked, trying to stand up straight. “Just lost.”
“Then you get yourself found.” He pointed toward the octagonal pillar of a public communications console, “Or I’m calling a security team down here to clean you off my street.” He tapped his ear meaningfully.
Aria licked her dry lips. “Yessir.”
When you can’t go back, you must go forward. Aria shuffled forward and peered into the gaudy twilight, trying to find a sign or a monument she recognized. If you can tell which is which.
The comm console loomed across her path. Aria teetered up to it and rested her weight against its smooth side. She stared at the blank screen and gently lit keyboard.
Aria’s hand trembled as she reached for the keys. She’d seen a lab assistant use one of these when he was going out for the evening. He’d called up the public system with a special nonsecured code…
I know the code, I know the code. But it would not come to the front of her mind where she needed it.
Oh, blast. Her hand dug into her pouch and closed around the smooth skin of the stone.
The boundaries of her memory burst with a rush of sensation that left her knees weak. She knew the code in an instant. She clung to the stone, savoring the freedom, and it was only with a wrenching effort that she made herself let go.
It felt like a massive hand pressed against her mind, squashing all her thoughts flat. She blinked stupidly at her fingers and wondered what they were for. The pillar squeaked against her skin as she slid closer to the ground. The hand pressed harder. Exhaustion helped it. Her fingers flexed idly, and she remembered. Slowly, one key at a time, she typed the code in.
The black screen brightened and showed a man with clear eyes and an angled jaw. “This is a special notice for all voting members of the First Families. Report to your section hall immediately for a special vote.”
What does it mean? She wondered. The hand was reluctantly lifting away, sparing her room to think, and just enough strength to straighten up again.
The man’s face faded away, leaving Aria staring at a black screen again. She hadn’t done enough. Her hand dropped to her pouch and her head started to swim.
No. She gritted her teeth. Not again. I won’t have any strength left. Hunger began to gnaw at her. She struggled with her unaided memory. Her fingers clutched the leather pouch and squeezed until her fingernails began to bend. With her free hand she touched the keys. Nothing happened. She tried a new sequence.
This time the screen lit up with the stylized lines and patterns that made up the city map. A crooked red line worked its way from where she stood to Perivar’s home. She found a key marked PRINT. A paper copy of the map slid out from the slot above the board.
For the briefest moment, Aria wished she was in Narroways. No one could have followed her there, never mind found her. She knew the alleys and the catwalks better than the rats. The Notouch would have sheltered her without question and given her any help she needed, knowing she would do the same for them one day. She would have had no fear of spies or betrayal, and if the night was cold and unpredictable, at least she could breathe the air and keep her balance as she ran through the streets. She could have told her direction by the placement of the walls and wouldn’t have needed to hunt around for street markers and struggle over their meanings.
Iyal had been wrong about that much. She couldn’t read very well. She just looked and saw and let the stones sort it out for her later. Except now there was no time for that.
With the map gripped in her fingers, Aria staggered forward.
Back home, the children swarmed all over Kiv, demanding the news. He deposited Ere in t
heir midst to let her relay it.
“Perivar?” he tapped his translator. “I need to open the housing.”
“Sure, fine, go ahead.” The tone of the live voice under the translation was furious.
Kiv slid the housing back. On the other side, Perivar paced back and forth, kicking his chair when it rolled in his path.
Kiv retracted his neck at the sight. “What’s happened?”
“The Vitae have gone gods-high crazy, that’s what’s happened!” Perivar kicked the chair. It ricocheted off the map table and toppled over, its wheels trying helplessly to get purchase on thin air. “They’ve kidnapped Eric Born!”
“What?” Kiv all but pressed his snout against the membrane.
“I just got a message from Dorias…from an AI Dorias created…” He stopped and knotted his fingers in his hair. “They didn’t even arrest him; they just took him. And now I got word from Iyal they want Aria Stone, too…what is with them?”
“I don’t know,” said Kiv. “They just tried to bribe me to deliver Aria Stone to them if she ends up back here.”
Perivar froze. “What did you tell them?” he croaked at last.
“There was not much I could say.” Kiv related what had happened at the Embassy. At his knees, he could hear Ere giving the same story to her siblings, almost syllable for syllable. Kiv dropped a hand onto the back of Ere’s neck. “Into the other room, all of you. I’ll be in in a moment.”
Ere whistled quizzically, but Kiv shook her neck. Ri and Sha wrapped their arms around her, dragging her with them in a complex knot. Dene and Ka bounded along behind them and made a great show of shutting the door.
Kiv wrinkled his snout and turned his attention back to his partner. Carefully, Kiv told how he had suggested that Perivar might come work for the Shessel, leaving out Gov’s origin and his smell.
“What do you say, my partner? There’s good money to be had from the Shessel.”
For a moment the tension in Perivar eased. “That sounds good, Kiv. Let the Vitae and the Unifiers and the Diet fight this out on their own.” He picked the chair up and set it back on its wheels. “But I can’t just leave Eric…” He leaned heavily on the chair back. “I don’t owe him anything, but I do,” he said to the floor. “He could have used me a thousand times over, but he didn’t. We agreed to keep quiet and we did until the Vitae decided they could start playing games.” Perivar looked at Kiv from under his fringe of disheveled hair. “I’ve got to at least find out if there’s something I can do. It’s my responsibility. The U-Kenai’s coming into port and I’ve got to meet it. Can you open the channel yourself?”