“You can have all the answers you want when Joshim gives me the go-ahead,” she promised honestly.
Rafe glared at her. “Does that include the ones you don’t want to give me?” he asked.
“What makes you think there are any of those?” Rallya demanded, startled.
“The way that you’re sidling around everything I ask, unless I can work out the answer for myself. The way you’re waiting for Joshim’s go-ahead, when you wouldn’t bother if it didn’t suit you.” He ticked his reasons off on the fingers of one hand. “The fact that I’m here, and not in the infirmary at Aramas. The fact that you’re playing nurse at my bedside, with a face like an explosion waiting to happen when you think nobody’s watching you. Is that enough?”
That was the last time Rallya let anything show on her face, even if she was sure she was unobserved, she resolved. Damn him, how long had he been awake before she noticed?
“There’s something unnatural about anybody who comes out of a fourteen day coma and notices so much so quickly,” she said tartly. “And you needn’t think that you’ve won yourself any answers. I did promise Joshim I’d keep those until he was here and I wouldn’t put it past him to throw me out if I don’t. So sit still, shut up and concentrate on convincing Joshim you’re well enough to be told. And that’s an order.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re the only person I know who can pack quite so much disrespect into that word,” Rallya accused him.
“I try, ma’am.” He closed his eyes, conceding a temporary defeat or conserving his strength. Rallya could not tell which. She realized with a jolt that she had pulled rank on him for the last time. Gods, he was unbiddable as a First; how much worse could he be when he knew that he had been a Commander?
“Who said you could sit up?”
Joshim did not wait in the doorway for an answer but crossed to the bedside, the relief on his face giving the lie to the tone of his voice. As he gripped Rafe’s shoulders, Rallya had the distinct feeling that her absence would be appreciated, at least temporarily.
“I suppose they’re swinging from the light fittings out there,” she said. “Somebody should go and supervise the riot.”
The two people clutching each other on the bed gave no sign that they had heard her. And Joshim had warned her against overtaxing Rafe.
Half an hour ought to be sufficient time for them to disentangle themselves, Rallya thought as she backed through the cabin door with a handful of mugs and a bowl of stew balanced on top of them. And if it was not, they could save the rest for later; they would enjoy it more when Rafe was stronger. If he still felt like it when he had heard what she had to say.
“How long did it take you to reach that compromise?” she asked them, finding Rafe still sitting up but reattached to the monitor.
“He pulled rank,” Rafe answered.
“When all else failed,” Joshim admitted, taking the bowl of stew and handing it to Rafe. Just half an hour had eased the tension from the Webmaster’s face, although it would take far longer to erase the lines that fourteen days of worry had carved there.
“Is he fit enough for some answers?” Rallya asked, setting the mugs down within reach of the bed.
“He’s fit enough,” Joshim said, less cheerfully. He slipped a protective arm around Rafe’s shoulders. Unnecessarily protective, Rallya decided. Rafe was too tough to break under the weight of knowing that he was indirectly responsible for Churi’s death. He might bend slightly, but it would be invisible and short-lasting. Nobody reached the rank of Commander without learning to live with the consequences of their actions, direct or indirect.
Rafe listened in silence as Rallya talked, his face showing little reaction to her words. Once he nodded sharply, urging her past the explanation of Sajan’s death that she offered, making the connections for himself. Once he frowned, as if testing the name Yuellin Lord Buhklir against his memory and finding no match. But throughout, Rallya could sense his anger uncoiling to fill the room, could see Joshim reacting to the tension in his shoulders. The quality of the anger made her ache with sympathy, left her braced for an explosion when she finished speaking.
“Yes.”
The word was exhaled more than spoken, and with it passed the possibility of a violent reaction. Rallya let her own breath go, less obviously than Joshim.
“Joshim, we talked about restoring my memory before.” Rafe was already back in control of himself, his anger not blinding him to the essential next step. “How soon can we try that Aruranist technique?”
Rallya glared at Joshim. He had mentioned nothing to her about Aruranist techniques when she had been worrying aloud about restoring Rafe’s memory. She had known it must be feasible; if his nervous tissue could recover so quickly from the random trauma of a massive overload, surely ten years was long enough for it to recover from the systematic damage of identity-wipe. And if the underlying nervous tissue had already healed, all they needed to do to release the trapped memories was to find the right key. She had spent a large part of the last fourteen days fruitlessly trying to identify that key.
“When did you two discuss this?” she asked, the implications dawning on her. If it had been before she revealed to Joshim her suspicions about Rafe, then they must have believed that they were discussing real Oath-breaking. It was a shock to realize that Joshim might have considered it.
“Don’t ask us that, ma’am, and we won’t ask you exactly when you worked out who I was,” Rafe said coolly. “Joshim, how soon?”
“Not for several days,” Joshim said firmly. “You nearly died in that web. You’re still a lot weaker than you want to believe and you know better than anybody how much remembering takes out of you.”
Rafe looked rebellious and Joshim tapped him sharply on the point of his nose, to Rallya’s secret delight. “I want the answers as much as either of you,” he stated. “The answers, and the people they lead to. When you’re strong enough, we’ll try it. But not before.”
“Good enough,” Rallya conceded, eight years’ experience giving her the edge over Rafe in realizing when Joshim was immovable. “Wouldn’t he feel better if he was horizontal?” she added innocently. “One way or another.”
Rafe looked as if he wanted to throw his bowl of cold stew at her, was prevented only by Joshim taking it out of his hands.
“I think I preferred you when I was unconscious, ma’am,” he said as Joshim lifted him bodily and laid him flat on his back.
“I’m sure you did.” Rallya paused in the doorway. “Since you’re now an honorary Commander, there’s no need to call me ma’am anymore.”
“I’m sure there isn’t,” Rafe mimicked. “But I enjoy it, ma’am.”
From the classic Aruranist text
"Guidance for Seekers"
…Through the core of every life runs a vital thread of experience, or a succession of interwoven threads, around which that life was formed. If you would remember a life, seek its centre. Find such a thread, follow its course, explore its linkages…
…Be guided by one who undertakes to journey with you, following at a distance, an anchor to the present. This one will remain in control where you will surely not…
333/5043
ARAMAS ZONE, OLD EMPIRE
“When you’re ready, move the fingers on your left hand.”
Joshim’s voice was filtered by the layers of relaxation that lay between Rafe and him. Rafe moved his fingers, detached from his own action by that same depth of relaxation, and dimly sensed the change in the air that he was breathing as Joshim fed the hallucinogen through his drug-mask.
“Remember, when you want the antidote, the signal word is Roshanir,” Joshim reminded him.
“Roshanir,” Rafe repeated obediently, still drifting through a haze of muted reality, waiting for the drug to bring the change that Joshim had promised. He had no intention of signalling for the antidote; they had too little of the arthane to waste any. There was enough for three doses, and Joshim judg
ed that this first dose was unlikely to bring results, would only make Rafe familiar with its effects and the ways of controlling them. They would have been better prepared if Rafe had not turned down Joshim’s idea the first time, but … If only won nothing except wasted time, Rafe reproved himself. He should be concentrating on the clues that he had to the memories which he was seeking.
Clues. Names. Yuellin Lord Buhklir. Sajan. Janasayan. The last of the three would be the best starting point, Joshim had suggested. Rafe’s previous name might be only a label for other people to use, with less significance for him than it had for them; it was true that the name still woke no answer in him, for all the logic that said it had to be his. And by her own admission, Sajan had not been important to Yuellin. Although he had been important to her in the end, and to his web-mates aboard Avannya, and to Churi … Rafe turned away resolutely from that chain of thought. Janasayan: that was what he should be focusing on, the ship that he had commanded.
He had been a Commander, should still be a Commander: that felt satisfyingly true, a piece of a puzzle slotting into place, even though the pieces around it were still missing. And a ship’s Commander too, not one of the primping politicians in External Liaison or the power-seekers in Central Support. That was the major flaw in the Guild’s organisation: the best webbers were allowed to cling to their ships and the real power fell into other hands. Rafe could almost hear somebody else—a nameless voice—saying that, and his own faintly guilty denial.
A ship’s Commander, then. Janasayan’s Commander. Rafe cast around for a reaction to that fact, an echo to lead him on. The function of the hallucinogen was to release his mind from its familiar channels, to free him to follow those echoes through his dormant memories. And it had begun to take effect, he realized. There was a subtle change in the quality of the sounds and sensations reaching him, Joshim’s voice, the texture of the bed beneath him. Curious, he opened his eyes and blinked at the world, the sphere around him that expanded with each indrawn breath and contracted with each exhalation. Joshim was still talking but the words had ceased making sense, like a reck played alternately too fast and too slow. Rafe grinned reassuringly and Joshim smiled back, splitting his face into two halves that stretched in opposite directions across the cabin as Rafe watched, fascinated.
“You’re well away.”
Rafe knew that the words had to be Joshim’s, but they bounced in a great circle around the universe before they reached him like rain.
“Cheap drunk,” he responded, for the sake of watching his own words bounce back.
“Don’t forget why,” Joshim cautioned him.
“I remember why. Janasayan. My ship. One third my ship.” Rafe closed his eyes against the sight of the molten walls sliding into a puddle on the floor. “One third my ship. One third Hafessya’s ship. One third Baruchya’s ship.” He opened his eyes again smugly. “I do remember. Why are the walls melting?”
“Close your eyes again,” Joshim advised him. “Let me worry about the walls. You tell me about Hafessya and Baruchya.”
“Hafessya and Ruchya,” Rafe corrected him. “Ruchya’s Captain. Hafessya’s Webmaster.” It was easy to remember now; he could not understand why it had been so hard before. “She’s a bully too.” The walls were not really melting; it was the curtain of fluid falling in front of them that made them look as if they were. “Somebody should turn the tap off.”
“They will.” Joshim reached out with a hand inflated like a brown balloon and closed Rafe’s eyes. “You concentrate on remembering. Where did you meet Hafessya?”
“Jenadir Station, when she and Ruchya were waiting there for a new ship. We got Janasayan straight from the construction dock, the first Amsiya class patrolship in either Empire. I spent days just going around her, stroking the bulkheads when I thought nobody was looking. Except Hafessya was looking.” Rafe blushed at the memory and felt his skin sing all the way out to his extremities. “She used to threaten to tell the web-room about it when she couldn’t control me any other way.” He opened his eyes and watched his flesh ripple like waves on water, resonating with the lingering blush. “How does it do that?”
“Trust me. Don’t worry about it,” Joshim told him. “Carry on telling me about Janasayan. When was she commissioned?”
“Fifty-twenty-eight. Just in time for the F’sair troubles.” There was no need to open his eyes to see; the room had seeped in through his eyelids and was painted on the inside in colours he had never seen before. “Can’t we talk later?” he asked Joshim. “I want to watch the colours.” He had never realized there were so many perfect colours.
“We’ll talk now,” Joshim insisted. “Do you remember why it’s important?”
Rafe shook his head wilfully and the colours broke up into dancing streaks of light. He laughed and his laughter broke into shards of glass that showered them both. He pulled Joshim towards him protectively. “Be careful. You’ll cut yourself.”
“I’ll be careful,” Joshim promised. “Tell me about the F’sair.”
“Nice people, apart from a defective sense of property. Don’t believe in other people’s property. Steal anything that isn’t bolted down. Stole me once.”
“They stole you?”
“Apologized for it.” Rafe giggled. “Very formal apology. Didn’t give me back though.” He could see the canine war-leader ritually offering food and drink, the interior of the warship, the ranked warriors drawn up to do him honour. And to stop him escaping. As if he could have escaped, the only human on a F’sair warship, not even knowing where they were headed. Scared, but that was something the F’sair must not guess. Take the food and drink. Compliment her on her ship, her warriors. Wait. Keep waiting … He shied away from the end of that wait, sensing the monster at the end of the tunnel. “Ugly, but nice people. Always did what they’d contracted to do.” Joshim was dissolving in his arms. He grasped him tighter, felt him slipping between his fingers. “Don’t go,” he urged.
“I won’t. Tell me, if the F’sair didn’t give you back, where did they take you?”
“Don’t know. Don’t remember.” As long as he did not move, he was safe.
“Don’t remember, or don’t want to remember?” Joshim prompted.
“Don’t know. Don’t want to know.”
Rafe opened his eyes, looking for something outside himself to drive away the fear. He had shrunk in the darkness into a tiny body on a mountainous surface that would not keep still but bucked beneath him like an angry sea. Far above him, sounds were dropping out of an open cavern rimmed with white slabs of stone. He twisted away to avoid being crushed, clinging desperately to the sea that was trying to throw him off.
“Close your eyes and hold my hands. Come on. It’s too soon to give in. Remember my name? Tell me.”
Joshim. Rafe formed the word in light and felt it smear like warm oil across his skin, saw the cavern twist into an open mouth and a face behind it.
“Tell me out loud.”
“Joshim.”
“Good. Now tell me your name.”
Rafe. Closest name, never rejected. All the others were escaping, like water through sand. He clutched at the one that remained, anchored himself to it. “Rafe.”
“Do you remember what we’re doing?”
“Remembering.” Rafe focused on that, on sorting Joshim’s voice from the cacophony pressing in on him. “Out of control.”
“Not quite. Ready to go on?”
“Ready,” Rafe agreed. “Hold me still though. Don’t let me move or I’ll fall.”
“I’ll hold you. Shall we talk about your family? Your father?”
“Don’t know who he was. Mother never said. Not even what he was, only near-human and anybody could have told that from looking at me. She needed a father for a child. Didn’t matter who, only when. Wanted me born before my uncle’s first child. And I was, by three days. She had me cut out of her, to make sure I’d be first. My uncle was furious, not to have thought of it himself. Tried to get it declared
illegal. Couldn’t. Had to accept me as his heir. Officially. Never really accepted me.”
His uncle’s face wavered in the air around them, with the angry scowl that was permanently reserved for Rafe. Rafe made a rude gesture in return and the old man vanished.
“He never believed I didn’t want the title. Buhklir, I mean. All I wanted was to be a webber. Grew up on Guild ships. Never wanted to be anything else. Mother was a diplomat. Dragged me around in her baggage. Didn’t trust her brother to keep me safe while she was gone. Wasn’t much safer with her. She died on Hurth when the negotiations went wrong. I would have died too but they didn’t kill children and they reopened the negotiations before I got old enough to be killed.”
Bright blue sun, too bright to go out in full daylight. Dark underground warrens and shadowy Hurthfolk. Watching her being led away and waiting until she never came back. Spending a lifetime learning from the priests who guarded him how to play anash and kerisduan, all the games of waiting. The floor of the room was an anash grid scattered with bright grey game-pieces that moved of their own volition, breaking the rules as if there were none.
“What happened then?”
The voice cut across the babble of the dancing game-pieces. They quivered and grew faces, all the same face, all Joshim’s face, wheeling silently around the grid like coins. Rafe reached out for one and it burst like a bubble, spattering acid across his icy hand.
“Tell me what happened next. After Hurth.”
“After Hurth? When I wasn’t dead? Embarrassing as hell for my uncle. He’d had me declared dead, my cousin named heir. Had to get it all annulled. Never forgave me for not being dead.” Rafe reached tentatively for the enormous face hanging over him, flinched as he touched it, relaxed as it did not shatter. “I’m babbling, aren’t I?” he asked plaintively.
A Matter of Oaths Page 16