"That – my senior, Inisar, spoke of them when he released us, but there was no time, and I could not–" Korinal paused, and I could almost see her push back what had to be overwhelming horror and shock, struggling to regain the detached tone she'd been using. "If they were, we did not suspect it until this day," she went on. "But for some time Inisar and others among us have been trying to unravel strange dealings on Nuri. Our people have been fractured by differing opinions about the strain within the Ena, and underlying that has been a strong sense of deceit. We thought it political, a struggle between the two with the greatest chance of succeeding to the leading House of Nuri, and when word of the touchstone on Tare arrived that impression strengthened. The urgency of the command to retrieve the touchstone, and Inisar's return empty-handed, brought many arguments. Inisar was sent again, this time only to observe, and did not return."
"So you were sent," Kaoren said. "And yet, there was some aspect of constraint."
Korinal nodded. "A Command. Created by a device of the Lantar brought from Muina during the evacuation and formerly rarely used. To place one under Command indicates a lack of faith, a cause for distrust. We were told that the divisions of opinion made it necessary, but it was a grave insult."
She stopped speaking, looking past Maze at the field of Nurans: those watching and listening, and those clumped in sleeping piles, curled on grassy tufts, tucked against tumbled stone.
"We did not look hard enough, allowed ourselves to be distracted by immediate concerns, even when among our own ranks there were those whose behaviour would have required investigation in less difficult times. Constraint. Yes, that is a word for it. Perhaps they, too, were under a Command. I returned to Nuri when it became obvious the child of Gaia had been removed to Muina, and found my people hard-pressed by Ionoth. And then the Dazenti – a type of Ionoth which has periodically plagued us in recent years: small, swift-moving, attacking in swarms, and capable of phasing so that even walls could not keep them out. The swarms have been growing more frequent, of ever-greater numbers, and though we were equal to tracking and dealing with them, the number of deaths among those we protect had become so excessive that it was necessary to create shelters. When the alert was given, all not capable of defending themselves evacuated to the shelters, and the walls charged with a shielding we had only recently discovered–"
She broke off, because half her Setari audience had reacted: a scatter of quickly-controlled movement and murmurs.
Maze, a muscle jumping in his cheek, said: "What you describe seems to resemble a place we found on Muina: an underground installation, the walls shielded, and many people trapped within, who died suddenly."
Nuri's spy system plainly hadn't passed on details about Arenrhon to Korinal. Her head went up and back, confusion plain, and she looked away from Maze, staring again at the clumps of children all around us.
"Were there large stones in their depths?" Taarel asked. "Dark green, smooth, perhaps two persons' height in diameter?"
"The shield generators," Korinal said, exchanging a glance with her two fellow sword-wielders.
"The Cruzatch use the stones as gates," Taarel explained. "We have found two on Muina thus far, and do not know whether the Cruzatch were involved in their origin, or merely take advantage of them."
Korinal, after a long moment, simply went on with her story. She doesn't seem to be a type who likes to speculate.
"A swarm warning was called this morning in First Home, our oldest and largest city, during the preparations for the yearly March of Dawn. We oversaw – our first duty is to protect the evacuees into the shelters, and then we hunt, clearing all the Dazenti. But Timon, one of our own, he–" She paused. "I will hope he was under a Command. I prefer that to thinking he betrayed us. He lured us into the smallest of the shelters, claimed it was breached. And sealed it."
She let out her breath, as if she had passed some hurdle she had dreaded. "It is not possible to teleport through the shield, and we could not reach the generator. But then there was Inisar. He was burnt, starved. Filthy. But he was outside the shield, able to activate the release we use when the swarms are over. He ordered us to open all the shelters, to get everyone as far as possible away from them. He said they were a trap.
"We had barely begun – only a handful of shelters were open when we found the releases wouldn't respond. There was a rising, overwhelming, sense of danger, and we concentrated on racing those in the open shelters to the surface."
"And then the end," said one of the other Nurans. "The death of Nuri." He was speaking in his own dialect, but it wasn't too hard to work out.
"The shelters exploded," Korinal continued, her voice thin. "All who were in them – there could be no hope. But it did not stop there. The sense of danger only increased, and the explosions did not cease. Stronger, deeper. We could see the far reaches of the city...vanish, dropping downward. The rift was the only place to go, and only those from the nearest of the shelters had any hope of reaching it. We sent them running, carried who we could. The ground began to open – we lost hundreds within a stone's throw of the rift – they were still pouring through and I was one of those just within trying to keep the movement flowing when it all – when – no more came through."
Someone was crying, down below, and luckily a new ship arrived to distract us all from thinking about what happened on the far side of Nuri's rift gate, to all those running people. I've never been so close to so much loss, and felt inadequate and overwhelmed, and was glad when Maze only asked a few more questions after the ship was loaded.
The explanation for most of the survivors being kids turned out to be the ceremony I'd seen at Kalasa. It's called the March of Dawn, where all the children of the city carry flowers to symbolise the new year's blessing. The Nurans hold a form of the ceremony on the anniversary of their arrival on Nuri, and they'd just been preparing to march when they'd been sent to the shelters. Korinal didn't know if the timing was deliberate, or if there'd been any purpose in having all the children gathered in one place.
I keep picturing a trail of crushed flowers through deep-space.
When the captains had run out of immediate questions for Korinal, I asked Kaoren to take me to find Lohn, who I felt a great need to hug. Mara had been treated in plenty of time, but the wounds were deep and her arm's badly broken and if she'd been a fraction slower the swoop would have had her neck.
Lohn was so upset. Everyone is, shocked and jumpy and made small by an event so large, but Lohn's fear for Mara was something I felt more equal to approaching. He didn't say much at all, but he half broke my ribs squeezing me back, and Kaoren and I stayed with him being perimeter patrol as ship after ship came and left, until the Litara finally returned from Pandora to gather up everyone who remained. I was tired out by then, and dozed off sitting beside my favourite seat in the packed common room where most of the Setari had gathered, only to be woken by my flower-giver climbing into my lap.
She latched her arms around my neck, and it was the weirdest sensation because she was shaking as she hid her face against my throat. Not sure if she'd had a nightmare, or was just reacting to the day's horrors, I looked about for her two shadows and found them coming into the common room. That gave me another strange jolt, because the pair – who had been so silently possessive of the younger child and spent most of the walk through deep-space glaring at me when they thought I wasn't looking – were barely recognisable. Eyes down, faces blank, hands and shoulders held so that – it's hard to describe it – like they were trying to be completely nothing.
They were followed by a boy a year or two their elder, half-heartedly herding them and looking like he wished he was anywhere else. And bringing up the rear, one of the adult Nurans, a plumply pretty woman who looked about anxiously, then said something sharp and soft to the two kids in front.
I was on my feet so quickly I might as well have levitated, despite the not-inconsiderable weight latched around my neck. In another second I might well have teleport
ed across the room. I never thought the way someone was standing could have such an effect on me.
Fortunately the woman spotted me, took one look, and simply turned and walked away, quickly followed by the unhappy older boy. And the younger boy and girl became people again, heads coming up, shoulders straightening. They didn't exactly look pleased to see me holding the younger girl, but they picked their way across the room without hesitation, and my new neck ornament let go and clutched them instead.
Kaoren, and the conscious parts of First and Fourth, had watched this mini-drama in silence, and shifted so the little trio had a corner to tuck themselves in, where they promptly pretended to be asleep. But the interface means you can always talk about someone right in front of them, with no worries about them overhearing.
"Pandora is about to become extremely...complicated," Lohn said, in the channel we made.
"There is a great deal we do not know about Nuri," Maze agreed, and added to me: "We'll flag this trio for a higher level of monitoring. Although–" He paused, then said to Lohn. "Complicated is an understatement. It was a struggle to get Kolar to accept the interface. Nuri...traumatised Nuran children...that's not an issue we can force."
KOTIS' well-oiled colonisation plan has gone out the window. "Was that woman related to them?" I asked Kaoren.
"I don't believe so," Kaoren said. "Since we are likely to be hosting most of this last ship-load in the Setari facilities, we'll have a day or more to establish some form of oversight, even without the interface."
He was right about that. There weren't nearly enough completed buildings at Pandora to house over eight thousand Nurans, even squeezed in together, and all the Setari ended up with guests on their couches. Given KOTIS' usual efficiency, it'll only be a day or so before they bring in fittings for some of the scads of windowless buildings waiting to be completed.
The language barrier isn't too bad. None of the flower girl's trio has said a word to us – or to each other that I've heard – but they follow instructions quickly enough to show that they're catching the meaning when we speak Taren. While Kaoren was fetching food, I showed them all how to use the bathroom, and Kaoren and I gave them (terribly oversized) clothes to change into and after they'd eaten settled them on our couch for the night. Three of eight thousand orphans.
We left our bedroom door open in case they panicked in the night, and when I woke around dawn, hours before anyone else seems inclined to get up, both Kaoren and the flower girl were sleeping on top of me. I had to wriggle out from beneath them for some quality time with my diary.
I don't know what to do about her. Why does she keep coming to find me?
She's sweet, in an imperious little princess kind of way, but the most I can do is make sure that she's "flagged for monitoring". With my hospitalisation rate, it would be stupid to try and keep some kind of connection with her, or her frowny sister and brother.
Assimilation
When Kaoren woke this morning, yesterday caught up with us in a big way, and we locked ourselves in the bathroom for an extra-long while. Kaoren is struggling with all that his Sights are battering him with, and I don't even want to think, let alone talk about the suggestion that it was a touchstone who was responsible for the disaster on Muina.
Three pairs of eyes greeted us when we emerged: one curious, one embarrassed, and one scornful, but at least we were primly dressed in our nanosuits. And then my flower girl presented herself, arms uplifted commandingly. I had to laugh.
"Sweetheart, you're going have to tell me your name if you want me carry you about all the time," I said, picking her up obediently.
"What sweetart?" she asked, wriggling about to see my face.
I still drop the occasional English word into speech unconsciously, so translated, pleased to have proof she was capable of speaking, though her shadows reacted with stifled shock and displeasure.
Kaoren handed each of the shadows a mug of juice, and stood considering them. "Not siblings," he said. Which was news to me. All three of them – like the majority of Tarens and Nurans – had black hair and brown-black eyes and though they were by no means identical it hadn't occurred to me that they weren't family, since they so obviously came as a set.
"Ys and Rye," my flower girl said helpfully.
"And you?"
"Sweehart?"
"Sentarestel." The boy said it, pink and unhappy. He's proving more a blusher than a glarer.
"Someone got all the syllables. I call you Sen, okay? Name of girl in one of my favourite ever stories. You three can call me Cass." I put Sen down on the couch, and noticed the girl (Ys) immediately helped steady the mug of juice Kaoren handed the younger girl. Relative or not, she was very used to playing Sen's minder.
I was debating little speeches to make to them when I heard a familiar "Hhhiiiiii" and stiffened. "Ddura is hunting," I told Kaoren urgently.
He immediately started speaking to someone over the interface, while those three pairs of eyes watched us curiously, widening in astonishment when Ghost came tearing out of nowhere and leapt into my arms. I'm relieved about that in retrospect – I'd forgotten I'd left her on the Litara.
"Not Ghost it's hunting," I said, feeling sick when the cry continued. "They missed someone security clearance." But just then the Ddura made the query noise, then stopped. "Gone."
"Signalled to a different platform. Someone will be posted to keep calling it there, but you need to report immediately if you hear it again." He gave Ys, Rye and Sen another evaluating look. "There will be a general assembly of all of Nuri at the middle of the day. Until then, you will stay with the group in this building. Do you understand?" All three of them nodded, though I won't guarantee they had more than a vague idea of what he'd told them.
After they'd dressed, we took them down to the common room, where a communal breakfast had been arranged, and asked two of the Setari who were helping out to keep a special eye on them since Kaoren and I had to go off to a meeting of the senior bluesuits.
It was a big meeting – not just bluesuits, but Isten Notra, the senior Taren and Kolaren Setari, and all nine of the surviving Nuran Setari, along with a half-dozen Nuran adults who had been suggested as representatives. We met in the fancy hotel, and the first person I saw was Inisar – obviously ill, but rested and clean and dressed in what looked like part of a greensuit uniform. I was very glad to have it confirmed that he was alive, and he gave me one of his ultra-formal nods in response to my relieved smile.
It was a breakfast meeting, and Tsaile Staben had everyone collect food from a buffet arrangement, then gave a short speech about what KOTIS had been doing on Muina in terms of settling and trying to uncover a solution for the tearing spaces. Korinal translated this for the Nurans, and I got enough of the gist of what she was saying to be fairly relaxed about talking to Nurans without a translator – it's not as if every word of Nuran is completely different to the Taren version, though there's going to be a lot of guesswork for a while.
After that, Tsaile Staben introduced 'her side of the table' very briefly (including me as "Caszandra Devlin of the world known as Urth or Gaia) and Korinal introduced the Nuran side of the table. Two of the Nuran representatives were 'landholders' (so far as I could tell this is a particular type of moderately wealthy farmer), one was a scholar, one a smith, one a cook and one what I'd call a (very young) priestess if Muinan planet-reverence used the word.
There probably wasn't a single one among them who hadn't lost almost everyone and everything they cared about, but only their red-rimmed eyes gave it away as they listened intently.
After introductions, Tsaile Staben said: "Both Tare and Kolar are of course willing to aid you as much as possible. But it is from you we need to know which direction to take. We need a decision, for your people, whether to remain as a group on Muina and become part of the colony at Pandora, or to be sent to Tare and Kolar to be housed with host families."
That got an immediate and very definite answer: Muina was their home world and i
t would now be their home, and there could be no question of splitting up the survivors of Nuri between other worlds. But one of the landholders, equally as definitely, objected to the idea of Pandora.
He wasn't nasty about it – he actually came across as one of the nicest people there – but he spoke really eloquently about the differences between the Nuran and Taren/Kolaren ways of life, and how becoming part of the Taren/Kolaren settlement would mean abandoning being Nuran, as well as risking becoming a lesser, subservient underclass. That though they would be grateful, of course, for temporary shelter, the best thing for them to do was choose a relatively safe part of Muina and create a settlement of their own.
Even though I don't think the bluesuits liked the idea of a Nuran-only settlement at all, Tsaile Staben simply nodded and asked the other representatives if they agreed. And it was clear all the Nurans were far from keen on living with Tarens, and wanted nothing more than to go somewhere Tarens weren't. But the idea fell in a heap when they even began to think over the practicalities of eight thousand children and six hundred adults trying to build a settlement, no matter how much outside assistance they received.
The cook, a woman named Eran, let the others talk back and forth, then summed it up by saying: "No matter what we want, how fair is it on them? Even if we treated the oldest as adults, we would be raising ten youngsters each. And they would be the ones doing most of the work." Then, after Korinal had translated, she turned to Inisar and said she wanted the Setari's view.
Inisar's voice was still really ragged, making it obvious why Korinal had been doing all the talking for the Nuran Setari. But croakiness didn't undercut the power of his words: "We are at war."
Korinal took over, very briefly pointing out that both the increasing fracturing of the spaces and the machinations of the Cruzatch were active threats which could not be ignored. That whatever decision the people of Nuri made, all the Nuran Setari's energies must go into fixing the bigger problem. And that while they might settle at a platform town with the protection of the Ddura, Ionoth were far from the only dangers a Nuran settlement would face on Muina. Even the landholder who had initially objected had to concede when the cook added that it was better to try to retain some sense of identity as part of Pandora, to contribute to what kind of people would be known as Muinan, than to be dead.
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