The Sovereign of Psiere

by K. Aten

  Stelle Gordy offered hospitality, it was the least she could do for all the Connate and Lt. Commander had done for them. “We have lodging and warm baths that can be drawn—”

  It was Castellan who interrupted her with a voice that was roughened and not as strong as normal. “Thank you Representative Gordy, but we must decline. The railer has been stopped long enough and we really shouldn’t hold up the schedule any longer.”

  Dismayed, Olivienne protested. “The railer can wait! You’ve been injured and should—”

  Castellan cut her off with a negligent wave of her hand. “I should get back to the railer. Our job here is done and the good people on board deserve to get to their destination without too long of a delay.” She turned her attention to Rep. Gordy. “If you have a moto to take us back, that would be greatly appreciated.”

  Stelle Gordy nodded. “Of course, Lieutenant Commander Tosh. We have motos and a larger hauler in the lot this side of the bridge. We’ll get you back post haste.”

  The group started back down from the bridge with Castellan walking next to the representative. Olivienne stood frozen for a meen longer. The guardians milled about clearly ready to get the Connate out of the rain and into the safety of her railer segment. Gemeda stayed behind to study the Connate. The sovereign’s face showed a multitude of emotions. Exhaustion, confusion, and irritation seemed to be the main ones. She understood what Olivienne Dracore was feeling because she had been friends with Castellan a long time. “She is a creature of duty, Connate Dracore. Castellan will always put the will and needs of others above her own.”

  Olivienne looked at the doctore. “She is infuriating!”

  Gemeda nodded sagely. “She can be, for sure.”

  “Seriously, she nearly died! I can’t believe she would carry on as if...”

  “As if nothing happened? That’s just her way, Connate Dracore. Even when she removes the uniform from her body, it never fully leaves her mind. She is a soldier’s soldier, through and through.”

  The Connate shook her head ruefully. “Please, after all this I think you can call me Olivienne.”

  “It is an honor. And in return I insist you use my name as well, Gemeda.”

  They started back toward the lot with the guardians in tow and Olivienne couldn’t keep her thoughts from the hardheaded Lt. Commander. “She’s going to get herself killed with that mentality.”

  Gemeda smiled up at her. “Won’t we all?”

  Chapter Six

  SOMEONE FROM REPRESENTATIVE Gordy’s group had clearly voteoed ahead to the railer because the aether-powered engine was warmed up and chuffing by the time they arrived back at the platform. Not only that but when the intrepid group of heroes walked onto the first segment, all the passengers stood and applauded. Olivienne used her pyrokinesis to warm and somewhat dry the group while in transit to the platform, and Lt. Commander Tosh had taken the time to straighten her uniform before they got on the railer. Olivienne wasn’t sure how the officer did it but by the time they greeted the other passengers, Castellan Tosh’s hair was slicked back and she was the consummate professional once again. It was only Dre. Shen’s frequent worried glances toward her that let the Connate know Tosh was still in pain.

  Once they were back in the first class segment, it was Dre. Shen who attempted to take charge. She took hold of Castellan’s arm and tried to direct her into the first cabin. “I need to finish your healing.”

  Castellan pulled her arm away and shook her head. “No, you need to get some rest. The entire reason I brought you down here was so you could be fresh for your surgeries first thing in the morning. You need to be resting, not tending to me. I’ll be fine.” When the medican leveled a stern look at her she continued. “I have daes on this railer to do nothing but read my book and heal. Why don’t you lay down for a bit...unless you’re hungry?”

  “No, I’m not hungry since I ate later than normal but—”

  “Go get some rest then, Gem. I’ll take a powder if the pain gets worse.”

  Olivienne had been watching the exchange go back and forth between the two stubborn women. Eventually the medican’s features took on an irritated but resigned set and she ground out one last word. “Fine.” Then she slid open the door to the lt. commander’s cabin and went inside.

  The guardians had left them alone, with half going up to get their own food from the dining segment and the other half retreated to opposite ends of the first class seg. Castellan stood there while she took stock of her remaining injuries. Her head throbbed in time with her heartbeat, and her left ankle was slightly sprained. She could also feel bruises on various parts of her body. Gemeda told both her and the Connate in the hauler that she only healed the worst of their injuries and took care of the effects of being dowsed in the icy water. They wouldn’t get sick but there was still a lot of pain. Then as if thinking about Connate Dracore reminded Castellan of her presence, she turned her head to the right and met those dark purple eyes. “Is there something you need from me, Connate Dracore?”

  Olivienne smiled at the enigma that was Lt. Commander Castellan Tosh. She was a mix of stubborn and brave, fascinating and controlled. But it didn’t take an empath to know Tosh was suffering. Olivienne could see it in the slight crinkle between her pale eyes and the tense set of her shoulders. “I have some powder in my cabin, for the pain.” She watched the officer stiffen and had a feeling Tosh would deny being in discomfort. “I’m going to take it now myself. And please, after all we’ve done todae, I would be honored if you would just call me Olivienne.”

  Castellan hesitated, then finally nodded her head. “I would appreciate the powder and thank you for gifting me with your given name. I would be honored if you would do the same in return.” She held out her hand to the Connate. “Lieutenant Commander Castellan Tosh, at your service, psera.”

  Olivienne took the offered hand and clasped it warmly in her own. “Brave, handsome, and polite...such a rare combination to have.” Castellan startled at the compliment but didn’t say anything in return.

  Once they were inside the Connate’s cabin, Olivienne finally relaxed. As a sovereign, she always felt as if she had to put on a mask in front of everyone, with the exception of her family. Strangely enough, she felt no need for such masks with Castellan Tosh. To keep from overanalyzing the feeling, she began searching through one of her leather satchels until she came up with a palm-sized waxed pouch. She grabbed two glasses from the sideboard and poured a finger of scotch in each, then added two pinches of powder. She turned around and Castellan raised a single pale eyebrow at her. “What, you don’t like scotch?” Castellan smiled. Her teeth were white and straight, her lips the perfect amount of fullness. The seemingly carefree action transformed the officer’s face from serious to swoon-worthy and Olivienne was not unaffected.

  “No, I like scotch just fine. I’m surprised you do though.”

  “You’d be amazed at the things I like.” Olivienne handed over the second glass.

  Tosh laughed and downed her drink in one swallow. “I probably would.” Either the powder or the scotch was of the highest quality because she started to feel better almost immediately.

  Olivienne saluted Castellan and downed hers as well. “We should have done a toast to a job well done. Five children saved...not bad for a dae’s work. Do you do such things often?” She got a curious look in return.

  “Such things?” The Connate refilled both glasses and waved for them to be seated on the lounge.

  Castellan stiffly complied, feeling a little out of place in the sovereign’s private cabin, as if she were doing something taboo by hobnobbing with royalty.

  Olivienne noticed the awkwardness but ignored it, hoping the other woman would relax. “I meant saving people every dae. Like you did at Temple Beach two daes ago. Running around throwing your all into every task to ensure that the job gets done and done well.” The Connate was aware that her words and tone of voice came out with the potential for double meaning. They were both going to b
e on the railer for daes and she was testing the dashing officer to see if she had potential for dalliance. Soldiers had a reputation after all, did they not?

  Castellan cocked her head and gave Olivienne an appraising look. She had a choice to either play the game or feign ignorance to the Connate’s deeper meaning. On one hand it was the heir to the Divine Cathedra sitting next to her, which in itself was a little intimidating. On the other hand it would be daes more on the railer with not much to do and an uncertain future once she reached Tesseron. If Olivienne Dracore was willing then perhaps a little tupping would go a long way to distract her from her worries. The Connate was certainly beautiful enough, if a bit hot-tempered. Castellan ran an index finger around the rim of her glass and looked into those startlingly dark violet eyes when she answered. “Well I wouldn’t say every dae. And I learned many rotos ago that if you want something to have a satisfactory outcome, your all is what should be given. With great effort often comes great reward. Wouldn’t you agree, Olivienne?”

  “If I didn’t, we would certainly have daes ahead of us for you to convince me.” The Connate took a slow sip of her scotch and watched Castellan with pleased eyes. Eventually they ordered evening meal into the Connate’s cabin. Castellan was able to finally relax and it turned into one of the more pleasant dinners she’d had in the past few rotos. When the meal was complete and both women were sipping glasses of portea, it was the lt. commander who moved the conversation to something that interested her just as much as a dalliance with a beautiful woman. “So tell me more about your current project. Did you find something of interest down in Ostium?”

  Olivienne let her move them past the blatant flirting into a subject she both loved and knew well. “I did actually. We found a document and numerous schematics in a cave at the western tail of the Dara Mountains. I have been searching for proof of the third great temple for the past few rotos. We occasionally find documents that reference a third temple but nothing that gives a name or location. We also find quite a few texts located outside either temple that cannot be translated at all. One of the documents we found in the cave is such.”

  The lt. commander nodded sagely while she savored the flavor of the strong vineo on her tongue. “I’ve read a few journals about the lost temple of the Makers. It has always been hinted at and rumored but no one has found proof. Do you really think you have a lead as to its whereabouts?”

  “I don’t have anything solid. The document we couldn’t decipher is slightly different from any others we’ve found before. Here—” She set her drink on a nearby table then got up and rifled through another satchel until she found a hardened leather tube. She pulled out a rolled piece of oiled vellum and carefully straightened it, weighing down the corners with items on the desk. “If you look here in the bottom right corner, there are two temple symbols instead of just one.” She grabbed another tube that was just sitting on the desk and unrolled a similar document. “The bottom of both have the same double temple symbol and that is why I think they are linked somehow. But neither page yields to either of our known decryption keys.”

  Castellan stood and walked over to look at the two pages that were side by side on the desktop. Both looked to be about the same age but were incredibly well preserved. Whoever the Makers were, they had technology and skills well beyond the modern Psi. “If I remember correctly, the cryptograph is always the same, right? It’s only the key that changes. The key is ‘ARCHEOS’ for documents and texts that were found in the Temple of Archeos, and ‘ILLEOS’ for the ones found in the southern temple?”

  “Yes but it is more complicated than that. The original text is translated to different letters based on the cryptograph. Then those letters are assigned numeric value. The key word is repeated over and over throughout the text, but it is converted to alternate letters just like the original text based on the same cryptograph. That too is converted to numeric value. The values are added together to form a sum and that sum is modified for the twenty-six letter alphabet. And to make it nearly impossible to decipher without the correct key, those final sum numbers are converted back into the cipher alphabet. It is quite ingenius really, but the maths frustrate me to no end.”

  “It’s madness! No great wonder that it took generations for us to start decoding the ancient texts!”

  Olivienne shrugged. “I suspect that is the point. There is a lot of power in the illeostones if utilized correctly and the Makers probably didn’t want us to find the texts and understand them until we were ready.”

  Castellan nodded at her common sense observation. “You make a fair point. So how does one go about deciphering the ancient texts? Do you do it, or is it only something an interpretist can do?”

  The Connate lifted one of the pages in question and beneath it was another page printed with evenly spaced graph lines, a multitude of perfect little squares. Along the top was their alphabet, and in the row below that was another set of letters that appeared to be a rearranged version of their alphabet. The subsequent rows in the first column were labeled as to what part of the decryption that row was relevant to. “This is the alpha sequence that has been discovered in both the great pyramids. It took rotos for the scienteres and historians to figure out that there was a key needed to break the code. With the name of each temple carved above every arched doorway, eventually someone was bright enough to try that.”

  “I think I read about that one. It was someone playing around with the crypto one dae and they stumbled on it, right?”

  “Yes.” Olivienne nodded then pointed at the first line of the document she retrieved from Ostium. “Normally I would let the interpretists do this work because it is tedious and my mind is not well suited for all the maths involved.” She gave Castellan a sly look. “I am after all more a woman of action. Too many oors stuck inside gives me fits.”

  Castellan laughed having already assumed as much based on the sovereign’s personality. “I would never have guessed.”

  Olivienne smirked and continued. “Anyway, I can do it, but it doesn’t come as naturally to me like it does for those who study such things. First you need to write the words you wish to translate on the ‘encrypted text’ line. On the ‘numeric conversion’ line you convert the letters to a number based on the original alpha sequences.” She rifled through the papers on the desk until she found a different document. “I’ll use one that I know is from the Temple of Archeos.”

  She wrote out some of the beginning text into the squares at the top of her worksheet. “Let’s say the first letter of the encrypted text is an ‘R’. So if a real letter ‘N’ equals an encrypted ‘R,’ and ‘N’ is the fourteenth letter of the alphabet, then the encrypted ‘R’ would be converted to a ‘14.’ You follow?”

  The soldier looked at the squares, the top one with an ‘R’ filled in and the one below it with a ‘14’. “Yes, I believe so. And after that you enter in the name of the temple?”

  “Yes, the name of the temple repeats over and over throughout the text. That too gets converted to the encryption letter, then on the fifth line the encryption letter is converted to a number and that is where the maths come in that I hate. On the sixth line you subtract the temple number from the original encrypted text number if it is less. If the numbers are the same you write ‘26,’ and if the temple number is more then you add twenty-six to the original encryption number before subtracting the temple number out. On the seventh line you convert it back to a letter, and that letter will be a cipher letter so on the eighth line you will need to convert that to the standard alpha letter again.”

  Castellan reared back her head from where she’d been leaning over the page watching Olivienne fill in the numbers and letters. The final letter written on the eighth line was an ‘L.’ “By the depths! That is as tedious as anything I’ve ever seen! People actually do this for a living?” Olivienne nodded. “And they enjoy it?” Just the thought of such a concept was appalling to the officer.

  The Connate smiled. “Believe it or not they
do. One of my regular interpretists, Dzin Solgin, loves his job. There is nothing he enjoys more than tackling a newly found sheet and turning it into decoded text.”

  Tosh shook her head. “Madness. So you did all that work for one letter, do you know what the text actually says on the document you’ve just started?”

  Olivienne nodded and smiled. “Oh yes, it’s a list of proverbs I acquired many rotos ago. It was the first document I found after I got my Adventurist designation. It says, ‘Last of the risers eats least.’”

  Castellan laughed. “That one is certainly true.” She slid the sheet aside so they could see the two double-temple symbol documents. Before she could ask any more questions, a great yawn nearly split her jaw in two.

  “I had no idea my company was so dull.”

  A slight blush crawled up the lt. commander’s neck and stained her cheeks. “My apologies, Connate—”

  “It’s Olivienne, please.”

  Castellan inclined her head toward the sovereign. “My apologies, Olivienne. But I fear the last two daes are catching up with me.” She pulled out her pocket watch and was shocked to discover that they had been enjoying each other’s company for oors.

  Before they could say another word, the speaker crackled and the pilot’s voice came on. “Attention passengers, we will be arriving in Gomen in ten meens. The stop will last half an oor while passengers and baggage are unloaded. For those continuing on to the city of Kemit, please remain seated and a porter will come around a check your ticket again once we are underway. Be advised that this railer is continuing on to the northern continent with a final destination of Tesseron. If you find your ticket in error and are headed for Soflin, speak with the nearest porter immediately so that you and your luggage can be offloaded with haste.”