by David Weber
Istin was doing a poor job of showing any interest in either his tea or the half eaten cookie in his hand. His head turned back and forth with the careful slow movements used to pass a scene to someone whose inner ear balance couldn’t automatically adjust for the regular bobs of someone else’s normal head motion—specifically to another Voice. Unless Kelahm missed his guess, Alazon Yanamar had just received an update on how many voters remained outside and how likely they looked to stick around long enough to fit into the packed assembly hall.
Kelahm knew a lot about more Talents than he could count. That knowledge was part of what made him such an effective bodyguard, and so were his own Talents. He was a Chameleon, able to blend so unobtrusively into the background that he could evade even trained security personnel who knew he was there and were trying to keep track of him. He couldn’t physically disappear; he was simply…not there even for people who looked right at him. It was a vanishingly rare talent, virtually unheard of outside the families who’d served the Calirath Dynasty for generations. And he was also a Heart Hound. He couldn’t read minds or emotions, but he could tell, unerringly, when a person was acting under duress or about to do something he deeply regretted. In other generations the Talent might have had the most use in the courtroom; in this one it proved remarkably useful in ferreting out unwilling agents caught in Emperor Chava Busar’s cruel control. Heart Hounds were less rare than Chameleons, but the Talent was still highly uncommon, and so long as the Uromathians didn’t recognize Kelahm was one, he had a very good chance of keeping Darcel Kinlafia safe. If Chava ever figured out how or who so consistently blocked his infiltrations of the Calirath household, on the other hand, the nature of those attempts would abruptly become much more difficult to detect and Kelahm chan Helikos would become merely an exceptionally dedicated personal guard. And speaking about guarding…
He nudged Istin’s shoulder when he seemed to have finished Sending.
“Want to go take a walk over to the train station?”
A pale face already beginning to redden in the sun blinked at him, and Kelahm wondered for a moment if Istin didn’t know he was trustworthy. Then Istin nodded slowly.
“Yes, let’s take a look at the other side of the cars.” He paused a moment. “Lufren and Torhm will come out and see to the pastries. We can go ahead. Voice Yanamar expects another hour to go before they break for the overnight trip.”
Kelahm tucked the two names away his memory, and noted Istin had just completed another lightning fast communication with their boss inside to ensure the campaign stop continued to run smoothly.
“Okay. Let’s go then,” he said, and they meandered down across the rails to the other side of the train station. The campaign train with its small private engine and car remained undisturbed.
Istin frowned at it.
“What?”
“We should’ve had the new engine here by now.” Istin’s frown deepened. “The new one’s bigger and can haul more cars. There’s some more campaign supplies coming with it, and it’s got a much better paint job, too.”
In the waning afternoon light, Kelahm examined the engine in front of them. It looked pristine with clean lines and, to his eyes, a fine coat of road-worthy gray paint, but Istin slapped the side of the machine with irritation.
“This’s supposed to say, ‘Elect Kinlafia Now’ on one side and ‘Darcel Kinlafia for Parliament’ on the other. We’ll update the slogans as soon as he wins, of course.”
“Of course,” Kelahm agreed though it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone would bother to paint political slogans onto a train engine at all. A check of his extended senses gave him no warnings of ill intent, but a thrumming vibration in the railway and the distant shriek of a whistle announced an inbound train.
“Do you suppose that’s it?”
Istin cocked his head slightly, and his eyes glazed for a few moments. Not safe, Kelahm’s instincts screamed, but the young Voice of course couldn’t hear him. He was instead communicating with someone assigned to the railway.
“No.” Istin scowled. “Not it. That’s the train the railway rerouted our engine for. Diplomatic priority, even though we submitted our timetable first.”
A magnificent, if unadorned engine squealed to a halt at the Whitterhoo Station trailing three unusual carriage cars and the normal motley of freight.
Istin Leddle groaned and trailed unwillingly behind him as Kelahm chan Helikos hotfooted up to the train station to see who might disembark.
“Don’t talk to them!” Istin called after him. “It only makes them more curious!”
No one had left the newly parked train before Kelahm arrived on an empty platform and discovered he wasn’t the only one with a sense of curiosity. He stopped quickly and his eyebrows rose as a dolphin’s left eye, set on the side of a long gray face, examined him from one of the windows. What Kelahm had at first taken to be normal carriage cars were actually filled with water and glassed in. The cetacean flipped in place as Istin arrived beside him, and another pair of small dolphins took to examining Whitterhoo from the large window in the next aquarium car.
The young Voice scanned all three and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank the Gods, it’s just dolphins and porpoises. At least they can be reasoned with!”
“Really? You’re a Cetacean Speaker?” That hadn’t been in the file Kelahm had seen on this particular Voice, but the Imperial Guard had no reason to give him full details if Istin was Talented beyond his publicly-acknowledged exceptional Voice Talent.
Not unless they had some reason to classify Istin as a potential threat, at any rate.
“No. I just did an internship at a cetacean embassy.” Istin waved off the suggestion. “They’ll have brought an interpreter with them. All the cetaceans hear just fine. It’s the listening I’m worried about. Just be glad there isn’t an orca,” he added darkly.
The Voice took his fist to the freight cars and began banging on each in succession until a weary young Cetacean Speaker climbed out of a car stacked high with dried cod. The young woman looked distinctly unwell and stepped gratefully off the train onto the platform.
“I am never, ever volunteering for one of these trips again!” She declared. “Just like being on a boat, my ass!” In spite of the green tinge to her own skin, the young woman turned back to her freight car and began hauling out stacks of dried fish to present to the dolphins and porpoises enjoying the afternoon sun in their cars.
“Trainsick?” Istin inquired.
“Yes!” She groaned. “And we were supposed to be in port and back in the ocean yesterday.”
“Oh?”
Kelahm gave the Voice a sidelong glance. Somehow he suspected Istin already knew what the cetacean train’s listed schedule had been.
“Yeah.” The Speaker sighed heavily. “I’m Forminara Pelgra, by the way.” She paused a bare moment for a formal introduction. “These are Nnnnmmmll, Llllooouooo, and Mmmmunnnll. But they’ll try talking to you even if you don’t get the pitch right. And don’t worry about memorizing the names, if you see them again, they’ll probably have picked other human names by then.”
“Those aren’t human names,” Istin pointed out.
Forminara shook her head. “I know, I know. But they like the sound of those letters, and they are human letters. There was this orca, and—”
“Never mind,” Istin interrupted. “I understand; I’ve met orca.”
One of the dolphins squealed something that sounded like laughter.
“Oh. And they’d like you to know my nickname is Sings Badly. It’s a joke.”
The dolphin’s musical response raised a blush on Forminara’s face.
“Okay, not totally a joke, but,” she added defensively, “I’m getting better.
“Say, have you seen any porters around here? We’re supposed to have a load of fresh fish at this stop, and there’s also supposed to be a politician they wanted to meet. Have you ever heard of a Darcel Kinlafia?”
* * *
“Should we support Darcel Kinlafia, do you think?”
Shalassar looked up from the piled correspondence on her desk. She’d forgotten for a moment that the lean, tough man who served as her rock was there in the room instead of pulsing support through their marriage bond from their seaside home.
Grief could black out her world like that. Still.
Thaminar knew her well. He lifted the net bag with their bowls of marinated grilled beef and expertly spiced vegetables and cracked the fitted lid to waft the welcome smells of comfort food. Her stomach growled in response, and Shalassar reluctantly moved back from the desk, her mind shifting away from the pain of their lost Shaylar and back to the present.
Lunch called and the lapping tide outside her window marked the never ending pulse of time passing by, whether she wished it to or not. She followed her husband to the break room for a late lunch, thinking about Darcel Kinlafia as the present political candidate instead of as Shaylar’s past colleague.
“Darcel has a chance to win, you think?” she asked him, settling into the comfortable chair at the break room table.
“Yes. The news reports say he’s well ahead. Not our district, but some of the letters, from—” He waved at the wall behind her indicating the green star flag hanging over the covered dock on the other side of her office, not visible at all from where they sat in the break room. “—are asking if they should vote for him.”
“Oh, them.”
The green star flag had been adopted by families who’d lost a child to Arcana, but this one was special. It was the very first green star flag, made to memorialize Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr. The other survey crew families had needed something too, so the flag had become the banner of a small group of families united by grief. But then, last month, the size of the group had exploded when all Sharona learned the war had been reignited by Arcanans attacking under cover of a truce they’d sought.
The war was horrific, in every sense of the word, and to have it resume in the very midst of peace negotiations only made it worse. Even as a diplomat—or perhaps because she was a diplomat—Shalassar found she had trouble thinking of the Arcanans as humans, and then the families of fallen soldiers had written her about their lost soldiers and asked to use the flag. She could hardly say no. But still…
“I’d rather hoped they’d stop writing us,” she said.
Thaminar paused mid bite to give her a look she didn’t need the marriage bond to read.
“Okay. No, not really. I just hoped it would get easier, is all.” She sighed. “They’re really asking us who to vote for?”
“Not at all,” Thaminar said. “They’re asking you. And reading between the lines, they’ve already decided. They’re asking you to endorse him and want to make political contributions as Green Star Mothers. Most of the letters are only to you and not to me at all.”
“Well, I’m not the most famous grieving mother anymore.” She pointed out. None of the other extended family members of the lost portal exploration team were as famous in their own right as Ambassador Shalassar Kolmayr-Brintal. And none of Sharona’s slaughtered children had been well known as Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr.
Until now.
Thaminar snorted. “No one’s going to be writing Emperor Zindel and Empress Varena expecting a reply or wanting to know if they’ve gotten their flag dimensions right. As if anyone would be going around policing grief!”
Shalassar’s wry return smile matched her husband’s. People had tried. None of their true friends were so crass, but the publicity-seeking social commentators who made their livings harassing public figures had reveled in it.
“Speaking of idiots,” Thaminar continued, “a rep from VBS stopped by again asking for a meeting off the record.”
“Not Krethva?” Shalassar gave him a look. Krethva wasn’t the only one to try to market Shalassar’s grief or to try to provoke her for shock value with snippy accusations of grieving in the wrong way. But she’d had the sharpest tongue and had inevitably become the one Shalassar publicly humiliated in a live Voicecast. She dreaded the moment when the woman found a way to return the public set down—not because she expected the reporter to be able to find words more painful than the hurt Shalassar already felt, but because she didn’t expect to be able to stay civil and coherent if Krethva managed to actually get a display of her grief and rage. Shalassar was half afraid she’d emerge from the interview with blood spattered everywhere and no memory of how it all got there other than a deep sense that Krethva has gotten what she deserved. And that Arcana deserved worse.
“No, not Krethva.” Thaminar broke into her red-tinted thoughts. “It was some other VBS Chava-ite. Any interest?”
Shalassar pressed away her emotions. “Sure, why not? Maybe I’ll finally be able to get the VBS to take a reasoned stance on respecting cetacean funeral rites.” She didn’t continue. Thaminar was well aware of her long-standing complaints about the string of Uromathian coastal villages who made toys out of whale bone. She suppressed a shudder. “So creepy.”
Thaminar speared another vegetable and ate it. The whales didn’t seem to care what happened to their remains after life left their bodies, but any market for cetacean body parts concerned the Cetacean Embassy. The Uromathians on Haimath Island also made memorials of their own ancestor’s remains, and Thaminar didn’t bring that up either. But his silence spoke volumes, and tight marriage bond or not, she already knew by heart the points he’d make.
He and Shalassar had feared they might outlive their daughter when she and Jathmar had become portal explorers, but they’d assumed that even in that horrific eventuality they’d have her remains brought home by the Portal Authority and properly buried. The flags were a thing Shalassar had invented because they had no normal way to mark their loss. And other families had had the same need.
Families of the Fallen Timbers portal exploration crew had started it by making their own flags, with Shalassar sending the first batch of them to her friends among the other families. The beginnings of a sob formed deep in her chest and she forced herself back to the last non-painful thing she could think of.
“I suppose we should tell people to support Darcel.”
Thaminar nodded. “He seemed like a decent enough young man. I hate to see anyone like that go into politics, but maybe he can do some good.”
They ate the rest of lunch without much more to say.
Back alone in her office, Shalassar sewed one more flag herself. She sealed the package and addressed it to Tajvana Palace. Empress Varena could display it in memory of Crown Prince Janaki Calirath or not, but Shalassar would give her the political prop if she needed it.
* * *
Campaign travel schedules were always hectic. Making them run smoothly was a formidable task, fit to challenge the best staff, even at the best of times. The New Farnalian winter harvest season, with the railways in high demand to transport food to the more frozen parts of Sharona, was not “the best of times” by any stretch of the imagination, and unplanned interruptions didn’t help at all. Unfortunately, they happened anyway, and at the moment, the backup engine with its bright “Elect Kinlafia Now” paint job was stalled somewhere behind the aquarium train stuck at the Whitterhoo platform.
&nbs
p; The news crews who’d been running commentary stories about Darcel since the campaign began had a field day. One crew reported he was providing a gentlemanly right of way to the cetaceans. A competitor news organization claimed he was being pushed around by a few silly dolphins. They all showed the forlorn little engine alone, without any trailing cars, stuck behind a massive glass-sided aquarium train.
Few reports spared even a few moments for the field abutting the train track, shining with ripe winter wheat. The dolphins watched the harvest with interest while their long-suffering young interpreter attempted to explain why humans went to such lengths to eat plant roe when the oceans were so abundantly supplied with fully matured fish.
Chapter Seven
December 13
“Excuse me, Your Highness, but what are you doing at my desk?”
Her Imperial Highness, Crown Princess Andrin Calirath, started guiltily and dropped the page she’d been trying to read in the dim pre-morning light. Her elbow barked the edge of the desk and nearly toppled one of the stacks of paper filling the half dozen in-boxes of her father’s first councilor, Shamir Taje.
The man himself stood in the doorway to his offices in the Tajvana palace, and she felt a flash of guilt go through her. He wasn’t merely her father’s first councilor; he’d also been her tutor in many things related to the power and might of the imperial government back when she’d merely been studying to support her brother’s eventual reign.
“Did you need something?” Taje cradled his first cup of dark morning tea and blinked groggily at Andrin. “Why isn’t the lamp lit?”
Because I was trying to sneak a look at these papers without drawing any attention, Andrin thought but did not say. Lazima chan Zindico, her personal guardsman, stood at the side of the room and waited quite politely for the crown princess to explain. She looked up at her old teacher’s tired face, feeling her face heat, and drew a deep breath.