by David Weber
Of course, those messages had been anything but “general” or “nothing” since the first news of the clash with the mysterious Sharonians had blasted over the entire Union or Arcana. The nightmare of not knowing for almost two weeks what had happened to him—if he was even alive or dead—had been horrible, despite the way in which all the 2nd Andarans’ wives and family members had rallied about one another. But then had come the wonderful news that he was alive and recovered from his wounds, although he was now stationed in a universe called “Thermyn,” which she’d never even heard of. Once she’d gotten over the shock—and finished weeping in joy—at the news that he was alive, she’d been a bit amused that his current post’s universe bore a name so similar to his own.
But she hadn’t heard a great deal directly from him yet. There’d been a brief note from her brother Iftar, telling her Therman had been found alive and rescued. And there’d been an even briefer standard Military Support Services survivor’s message, from Therman himself. Aside from that, there’d been nothing, which suggested the censors were clamping down pretty hard. Arylis had enough of a garthan’s suspicion of those in authority to make her uneasy over that silence, but she trusted the Army to tell her if anything bad—anything else bad—happened to her husband.
This message might well be from BFR or even from Therman himself, which was why her fingers itched to check its contents, but she made herself take the time to finish caring for the hummer. Hummer stations could transfer the messages from creature to creature as they came down the line, but the hummers didn’t get immediately sent back after long trips, either. So if the message was from Thermyn and not the BFR office right here in Portalis, this hummer might have been the one to bring her message much of the way across New Arcana from the outbound portal to New Andara. Or it might have brought some other message and simply been reused for a purely local message by a sloppy handler who hadn’t noticed the creature’s need for rest.
If it had been Threeday, she’d have been certain it was just another Bureau of Family Relations nothing message. But today was Fiveday and she’d already gotten one of those this week.
The hummer finished the last bead of sugar water, pressed its needle-sharp beak against the back of her hand with feathery gentleness, then squirmed until she released it. It hopped back into the cage, crossed to the cage’s message chip, and tapped the chip once with that same beak. Its complex enchantments had completely transferred the message to the sarkolis chip in the base of the cage, and it was clearly impatient—thanks to those same complex enchantments—for her to confirm receipt and send it upon its way once more.
She had no intention of doing anything of the sort, however. It needed a longer feeding, and so she refilled the icing bag with more honeywater and hung it from the top of the cage before she extracted the crystal from its receptacle. then she latched the hummer into the cage to ensure it would get to finish feeding before the homing compulsion forced it on.
Arylis tried not to hope for too much when her shaking hands slotted the message chip into the carved lines of the family’s old message reader. A family with a magister, or even a novice in its household, would use a PC for this and a multitude of other tasks. Since neither Arylis nor Fifty Ulthar had a scrap of Gift between them, she used reliable single purpose spellware for the few things in their home life that required enchantment or disenchantment.
“My name is Arylis Ulthar.” She spoke carefully into the device, enunciating, and projecting her voice a bit more than normal to make sure its aetheric energy made a strong enough field for the old spellware to work.
The carved lines marking out runes and amplification circles around the message chip glowed a familiar solid blue, and Arylis relaxed. The old device hadn’t chosen this moment to stop working.
The chip slowly warmed until it too glowed. Then it did exactly what she expected.
“Personal message from”—the spellware paused to access the sender’s name and then continued, and Arylis’s heart leapt as Therman’s familiar reference number rolled out of the reader—“soldier 2AS-50C-03-73524. Speak access code to retrieve message.”
“I love you Therman. It’s Arylis.” She wiped a little wetness from her face. It was hard to deliver her personal access code in the deadpan tone necessary for the spellware, but she managed. Sheer stubbornness kept her from changing it, even as difficult as it sometimes was to speak the phrase clearly on the first try.
The hummer chirped happily. She glanced up and saw it return to feeding.
“Message decryption in progress. Please wait.”
She waited.
And waited. And waited. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. This message was far longer than the MSS survivor’s message had been, and she wanted it—wanted it more badly than she’d ever wanted anything in her life! But it would take however long it took, she told herself firmly…and was just about to poke at the crystal chip to see if it was seated properly when it finished.
“Arylis, my love,” Therman’s voice said from the reader, clearly him, but with the extra rasp camp-recorded messages always had. “I’m fine. Things have been rough out here. I’ll tell you about it when we all get home. The war, well, its war, but I’m okay and I’ve seen Iftar. He’s fine, even if he isn’t any happier about this whole damned mess than I am. Pass that on to your sisters and give them my best, as well. And I’m sorry about putting you in this position, but I knew you’d find a way. I love you.”
The message continued with just soft rasping over silence while Arylis stared at the crystal chip. He was sorry? About what position? Then the reader’s spellware clicked on a second time.
“Personal message for soldier 2AS-Actual. “Message decryption in progress. Please wait.”
Arylis’s mind froze. 2AS-Actual?!That was…that was ridiculous!
Her husband, Fifty Therman Ulthar was 2AS-50C-03-73524, the Fifty commanding Third Platoon, Company C, Second Andaran Scouts and assigned the lineal number of 73524. But 2AS-Actual was the commander of the entire Second Andaran.
That was the Duke of Garth Showma himself.
She was still staring at the reader in shock when the hummer tilted its long beak away from the tip of the icing bag and gave a bright chee-dit. It was done feeding, and her hands moved as if they belonged to someone else as they loosed the fine bird. It tapped the cage’s floor once, its complex enchantments received the signal that the message had been completely transferred, and with a blur of wings, it was gone. Arylis’s eyes tracked it automatically as it disappeared
“Decryption complete,” said the message crystal reader. “Message ready for replay.”
* * *
The well-fed hummer landed at North Portalis Hummer Aerie. The delay while it was fed had also delayed its confirmation that its message had been downloaded to Arylis Ulthar’s reader. That meant its implanted crystal had been active when Arylis spoke her access code and Therman’s brief message played itself. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did occasionally, and the privacy laws were clear. When it did, any scrap of personal information which had made its way onto a hummer’s crystal was immediately deleted. But in this instance, when it returned to its aerie and the scrap of conversation uploaded to the central traffic crystal, someone who shouldn’t have even known about it read it before it was deleted it.
* * *
“Straight to the Duke,” Arylis told herself. “Just take the message straight to the Duke.” She almost laughed. Of course Therman had thought that would be easy; he hadn’t been living in northern Garth Showma these past six weeks. He didn’t know what they’d been hearing about the war. Instead he’d been experiencing the truth of it.
She shivered at that thought, because it shouldn’t have been that different. What she’d been certain of and believed with absolute conviction and what she thought was probably true now, after hearing Therman’s version—they shouldn’t be so opposite.
Not knowing what else to do, she packed
up the half frosted cake in its beautiful red striped carrier and matching satchel. One of her sisters had given her the thing. A cake carrier bespelled for freshness and balance to keep the frosting from messing even if the whole thing was tumbled end over end…and just a little greater in diameter than the flat, round spellreader. She put the reader into the fitted satchel first, then slid the cake carrier on top. The rosy bubble over the cake stuck out a half palm’s width more than it should have, but with a little effort Arylis still got the satchel to close. Tinkling bells played a soothing arpeggio and the Ransaran company logo on the satchel changed from pale rose to burgundy. Good, it had sealed.
She hung her apron on its hook, wrapped the satchel strap twice around her wrist for a good hold, and set off for Portalis. The duke was in residence, and he wasn’t likely to be anywhere else when she arrived. Not with the news services’ daily, breathless reports about the closed sessions of the courts-martial.
Arylis Therman didn’t follow those reports…mostly because she already knew exactly what their outcomes should be. Her family’s memories of Mythal were long, deep, and bitter. None of them had ever been bound in service to the vos Hoven line, but one shakira clan was very like another, and what she’d heard of the charges against him told her precisely what sort he was. Magister Halathyn would have spat on his shadow, she was sure.
The memory of the dead magister sent a fresh stab of grief through her…and an even hotter stab of fury. She hadn’t actually read Therman’s message to the duke; that was between him and his CO. But he’d wanted her to know at least some of why it was so important for that message to be delivered, so he’d included a brief synopsis just for her. Which meant she now knew that the official stories coming from official government spokesmen—the stories she’d put down to an effort to control the rage of every garthan in a hundred universes—were actually the truth. That they hadn’t been fabricated to still the outrage, as journals like the Herald Times trumpeted in every issue. That the “scoops” from “official sources speaking on condition of anonymity” were the lies. The Sharonians hadn’t killed the magister; their own troops had! And like her brother and her husband, Arylis could think of only one reason—and one group—with the motive to lie so consistently, so passionately, and so convincingly about it.
And vos Hoven’s part of that same stinking, lying, twisted sewer of shakira, isn’t he? she thought bitterly. Well, at least maybe he’ll get what he has coming! And if Ulthar and Therman are right, the Duke may just see to it that another batch of the scum get what they’ve got coming, as well!
She hugged that thought to her, but at the same time, a fresh shiver of concern melded with the hot fury, like an icy wind through the throat of an angry volcano. If Therman was right about what was happening, then the odds against Sir Jasak Olderhan were even worse than she’d feared they were. Like virtually every garthan, Arylis knew about the bitter hatred between the Olderhans’ faction of the Andaran nobility and the shakira. That was one reason she’d been so proud when Therman was assigned to Hundred Olderhan’s company. But if Therman was right about how high the lies and the manipulation had to go, then Sir Jasak had to be in the sights of whoever was truly behind it. And no one had to tell a garthan how deadly any shakira line lord’s malice could be. And if there truly was some sort of general conspiracy behind all of this…
Arylis hugged the float-assisted cake carrier to her chest as she walked into the public slider station and checked the schedule. She found the connection she wanted, bought her ticket, and settled into an available seat with the cake carrier cradled in her lap, and her mind went back to the questions and speculation buzzing through it like Mythlan mosquitos.
There was no news about either of the courts-martial, and there wouldn’t be, until they were concluded one way or another. The Union Army’s tradition—adopted from the Andarans—was that the public was entitled to full disclosure of charges, testimony, evidence, and verdicts in any court-martial…but only after the trial was completed. The accused was guaranteed the protection of confidentiality until his guilt or innocence was determined, and that confidentiality could be extended still further if he was convicted and chose to appeal…assuming the Judiciary General’s Office granted an appeal hearing. That was another reason she’d avoided coverage of the trials; all the reporters and talking heads could do was rehash rumors, speculation, and more of those “confidential sources,” and she didn’t trust any of them as far as she could spit.
Well, they’ll have something else to chatter about after the Duke reads Therman’s message, she thought grimly, and tried to suppress a fresh pang of fear—this time for her husband—as she considered how a shakira was likely to respond to being dragged out of his foul, comfortable concealment by a mere commander of fifty.
I’m not going to think about that, she told herself firmly. Not right now, anyway.
She pushed the thought from her mind—or as close to from her mind as she could get—and tried to distract herself by watching the scenery flow past the slider window.
The slider system trundled through Portalis, making its many stops to deliver her with thorough, if not speedy, efficiency to the Central Portalis Station. The ducal town house was only a few stops farther, but this was where the sliders really began to pack in with fellow travellers. There were a lot of them—more than there should’ve been—and heavy bags with broom handles and folded bits of sheeting poking out of them filled the overhead luggage compartments. The conversation around her was filled with none-too-suppressed anger—and fear—and Arylis didn’t care for it a bit. There was also a lot of talk about forming up at the last stop and marching to the Garth Showma House together.
What especially disturbed her was the percentage of the protesters who were clearly garthan. Their anger was even more searing than that of the Andarans flocking to demand a more rigorous prosecution of the war. The fury over Magister Halathyn’s “murder” was to blame for that, of course, and she wanted to shout out the truth. But she dared not. Even if they believed her, it would be a betrayal of Therman’s charge to get word secretly to the duke…and odds were they wouldn’t believe her. The rage was so profound, the notion that the Sharonians had killed the magister had burned itself so deeply into their minds, that they’d almost certainly turn on anyone who tried to deny the “truth” they knew like rabid animals. Indeed, some of them reminded her of rabid animals—of the very stereotype the shakira had tried for so many decades to sell to the rest of the Union—and their assumption that she was one of them made her toes curl. Of course she looked the part: younger, female, obviously Mythalan and working class (and thus automatically a garthan herself), and out during the middle of the day without an obvious work errand at hand. One or two of them tried to talk to her, but she only nodded politely and returned as noncommittal a reply as possible.
The crush getting out of the slider was dreadful, and try though she might, she couldn’t break free from the tide of bodies flowing through the streets. By the time she reached Garth Showma House, the group from her slider—and far more people beside—packed the wide avenue from one side to the other. She couldn’t see very clearly; she was too short to see over the sea of heads between her and the townhouse, but the chanting was in full swing and if they’d ever formed up in any sort of order they’d long since fallen out into a rough mob, swirling like a storm-lashed ocean. Fortunately, the high walls around the front of the public-facing building, which looked ornamental, were proving to be a solid defense. But broomsticks intended to hold painted sheets tied between them were now being banged against the wall in tempo to the chanting.
Arylis pushed her way through, using the cake satchel as a prod to force a place for herself. It didn’t have the sharp corners of a sturdy traveller’s trunk, but the rounded shape worked better in this already hostile mob. The spirit of the crowd was too uneasy, filled with too much sullen anger—and fear, probably—and she really didn’t want to crack the dragon’s egg without family
around to back her up in a fight. Even with the chanting and banging, people were too upset and too quiet, and she had a skin-prickling sense of latent violence swirling all too near the surface of their uneasiness.
A knot of women blocked her way with tightly locked arms. They swayed together with the motion of the crowd’s cheers and sobbed in time.
Arylis called out her apologies and tried to push between two of them.
Tear-streaked faces about her own age in shades of brown looked down on her. There were older faces—most more starkly Andaran-pale but some almost as dark as Arylis own skin—among them. An Andaran family with garthan immigrant parents or grandparents, she realized, and from their expressions they were almost certainly here to mourn Magister Halathyn and not to lash out like so much of the rest of the crowd.
“The guards won’t let us in,” one of them told her sadly.
“I just need to try,” she replied, although she really wasn’t sure what she’d say to get admittance even if she managed to reach the front of the crowd.
The words didn’t mean anything particular, but the women loosened their grips on each other just enough to let her through and she plugged gamely on until she was close enough to duck under the stick wielders themselves. One of them nearly hit her—by accident, she thought—but she managed to block the stick with her cake carrier.
“I’m trying to get in!” she told the man with the stick as he glared at her as if it was her fault he’d almost hit her. She had to shout to make herself heard, and his expression made her go on quickly. “I just want to ask—”
It was the wrong thing to say.
A woman with a voice amp heard it and the chant changed.
“We want in! We want in!” it roared, and the crowd surged in response.