Hexwood

by Diana Wynne Jones

  A look of incredulous hope came over Siri’s face. Vierran could see her thinking of the unexplained absence of Reigners Two, Four and Five, of accidents at portals, wars on Earth, violent natives and a universe ridded of all five Reigners at once. She gave a warning frown to remind Siri that the line was certainly bugged.

  Siri tried to turn her expression into a normal smile. “How nice,” she said. “None of the poor dears have had a holiday in either of our lifetimes, have they? What an honour for you! I’ll tell Uncle for you. When do you go?”

  “Later today,” said Vierran. “Can you ask him to give me the present he promised me if I was ever honoured like this? I’m going for a last ride out in the park in an hour’s time.”

  Siri looked at her timepiece. Vierran’s father lived and worked in the House of Guaranty’s main holding half the world away. “I’ll tell him now,” she said. “I think there’s just time for him to express you a parcel. I’11 ride out and meet you and give you it if it’s come. We can say goodbye anyway. And,” Siri added, meaning the opposite, “I do so envy you.”

  “Thanks. See you. I have to go and get a headache from a double-speed language course now,” Vierran said. They grinned at one another, rather tensely, and disconnected.

  The language course did give her a headache, but it was not as bad as Vierran expected, and it largely disappeared while she was saddling her beloved horse, Reigner Six. His name was another of Vierran’s jokes. As far as she knew, the Reigners took it as a compliment, if they noticed at all. The headache went entirely as Vierran passed under the dark crete of the stable gate and went thudding out across the wide greensward of the great park round the House of Balance.

  Reigner Six was feeling lazy. Vierran had some fun cursing him in colourful Earth-talk, trying to get him to canter. But underneath she was stern with worry. She kept glancing sideways and back at the great luminous looping coils of the House of Balance, a masterpiece in Earth flint. It always reminded Vierran of a model of the inner works of the human ear. Very apt, since the Reigners listened to everything. They might easily have listened to her talk with Siri. And she would only know if Siri failed to turn up.

  At least, she consoled herself, Siri would have told Father. And he would be worried sick. Well, she was worried about herself. By now the House of Balance was only a sheen on the horizon. She was sure Siri would not come.

  But a bare half-mile on, Siri’s horse Fax and Siri’s own shape appeared on the skyline, tall and slender, and Siri’s blonde hair blew like Fax’s mane in the wind. Vierran smiled lovingly. Bless Siri! Siri, in her own way, was quite as beautiful as Reigner Three. She had the Guaranty looks. Vierran had missed those looks, and Mother’s too. Mother called her a throwback. Throwback to what? Vierran always wanted to know. A gnome? Mother always laughed and said no, a throwback to the early peoples of Homeworld. In which case, Vierran retorted, they were right to have died out.

  But there were drawbacks to looking like Siri. Reigner Four fancied Siri. This was why Siri had a permit to ride in the park. Siri used the permit freely, but only when Vierran told her Reigner Four was out of the way. When she thought of Reigner Four, Vierran had to admit there were some advantages to looking like a gnome.

  She waved delightedly at Siri. “You made it!”

  “EH?” yelled Siri.

  Vierran realised she had accidentally used Earth-talk. Serious as this meeting was, she could hardly speak properly for laughing. But Siri when she came within speaking distance was too worried to be amused. “How can you laugh? You’re mad! Your present arrived. Uncle must be mad too. This thing must have cost a small estate. Here you are.” She handed Vierran a broad jewelled bracelet, the fashionable kind that you wore on your upper arm. Any spy-eye abroad in the park would have registered it as a bracelet – unless it had been specially alerted of course – and passed on.

  Vierran noted the promised micro-gun disguised in the elaborate gold design, the spare darts for it slotted into the patterned edge and – bless Father! – a tiny message cassette pretending to be part of the clasp. As she clasped the bracelet on her arm, she told herself she felt better.

  “I’m getting them to send Reigner Six over to you,” she said. “Take care of him for me.” She wanted to add, “until I come back,” but the words would not come out. Such a gift as this bracelet, as she and her father both knew, was likely to be the very last thing he would ever give her.

  By the early evening, it was all round the House of Balance that Reigner One had had the heads of all the least loyal Houses arrested. Vierran’s father was one of the first on the list. But from what Vierran could gather, Uncle Dev and maybe even Siri and Mother had been arrested with him. How stupid, she thought. That business with the bracelet was just too obvious. She had a mad need to throw the bracelet away, or rush to Reigner One’s suite and shoot everything she met there, or simply lie with her legs in the air and scream. Instead, she packed her bag and went through the pearly labyrinth to the portal when Reigner Three paged her.

  Reigner Three was wearing something slender and white, with white fur wrapped across her shoulders, and a broad hat that wonderfully set off her lovely face and dark, glossy hair. She was followed by a robot carrying a suave grey suitcase which, to Vierran’s dismay, was nearly twice as big as the one that had been its model. While Vierran looked with foreboding at this enormous piece of luggage, Reigner Three looked with strong disfavour on her new maid. Vierran was wearing trousers with a dark floppy top, long-sleeved to conceal the bracelet.

  “You look like a native of New Xai,” said Reigner Three. “Won’t they stare at you on Earth?”

  “The young people dress like this there, ma’am,” said Vierran.

  Reigner Three gave this a moment of expressive silence. “Take this suitcase,” she said, signalling to the robot to pass it over. “And now I suppose we’ll have to wait an hour or so while One finishes arresting people.”

  But Reigner One was already approaching, followed by another robot with a small valise. He must have had his own private store of clothes. Without going near the basement, he had somehow acquired a dark pinstriped suit, beautifully tailored to his somewhat bulky frame. A white raincoat hung over his arm and a soft felt hat dangled from his fingers. He gave his moustache an amused tweak as he saw the contrast between Reigner Three and her maid. But the hand fell to his newly trimmed silver beard and tugged, when he saw the maid was Vierran.

  “My dear,” he asking, smiling, “why have you brought the daughter of the House of Guaranty from her duties below?”

  “Because I know perfectly well that a robot would cause a sensation on Earth,” Three said. “You don’t expect me to do without a maid, do you?” She watched the hand on the beard warily. When Reigner One clutched his beard, he was not pleased.

  He was not pleased. He weighed the matter up, without altering his bland smile, and decided he would explain to Three later why he was displeased. As to Vierran herself, it could well be an advantage to have her on Earth after all. He had planned to use the blonde cousin, but doing things this way would complete the downfall of House Guaranty much more amusingly. He knew all about Vierran. He knew she played at revolution, thinking no one would suspect a girl in her position. He knew about Reigner Six, and most of her other interests. And when Vierran, a while ago, had seemed to busy herself finding out all she could about the Servant, Reigner One had smiled and put information in her way. That, and her sense of humour, amused him, because he knew that very shortly she would have nothing to laugh about at all. He thought he might as well tell her why on the journey.

  He took his hand from his beard and signalled them to open the portal. Reigner Three relaxed as she followed him through the pearly arch. Vierran, anything but relaxed, struggled after them with their three bags.

  They made an apparently leisurely journey down through the galaxy. But Vierran had good reason to notice that Reigner One never really stopped for an instant. He sauntered steadily onwards, bea
ming genially at Sector Governors and their hurrying underlings, and did not let any of them delay him even for a second.

  Luckily for Vierran, the hurrying underlings ran to carry the suitcases to the next portal, so she only had to take their weight down the long pearly walk-throughs. That was more than enough. Her hands were blistered and her arms were dragged, long before they reached Iony. What a waste! she thought. A great journey like this, and I can hardly notice anything but how heavy these damn things are! By the time they were right out in Yurov, her back ached and her knees shook.

  Reigner One called a surprise halt, here in Yurov. “I hear,” he said to this particular Controller, fat and anxiously fawning among his sumptuous gold screens, “that you produce some remarkably fine sangro on your estate here.”

  “Trust you to remember that!” Reigner Three said tartly. Her feet, in high-heeled white shoes, were killing her. “Does this office have a Ladies’ Room, Controller?”

  “Certainly, certainly,” said the Controller of Yurov. “Yes and yes, to both matters, Excellencies.”

  Vierran sighed. Reigner Three would indubitably want her maid there to run round her in the Ladies’ Room. All Vierran wanted was to lie on one of those crimson sofas and rest her aching back. But some kind of look passed between the two Reigners. As a result, Reigner Three went off to the Ladies’ Room like a tall white ship of the line, in a bevy of escorting officials, and Vierran found herself sitting – very upright – on one end of a crimson sofa, with Reigner One lolling easily at the other end.

  She was suddenly truly scared. So scared that she realised that her feelings back in the House of Balance had hardly been real. This was real fear. It squeezed her heart and held her in a cold paralysis, almost as if she were in stass. When the bowing Controller handed her a golden goblet of wine, the blistered fingers she took it with were icy, and tight, and withered white.

  Reigner One sipped, rolled the sangro round his mouth, and beamed. “Ah! It is wonderful! My Servant has an excellent palate. How ironical that this was something I never thought to breed for! Don’t you admire the colour of this wine, Vierran? Almost the colour of my Servant’s uniform, is it not?”

  “Not really, sire. The wine’s more the colour of blood,” Vierran answered.

  “But I dress my Servant in scarlet to make people think of blood,” Reigner One protested cheerfully. “You think it should be a darker red? I believe you take an interest in my Servant, Vierran?”

  “I’ve talked to him, sire,” Vierran replied.

  “Good, good,” beamed Reigner One.

  Always smiling, Vierran thought. Why does he smile? I ought to use this gun on him. She was surprised to find that her terror left her room for such hatred. It was such fierce loathing, physical, sickening loathing, that if Reigner One had moved an inch nearer to her along the sofa, she would have attacked him with her bare hands.

  He knew. He smiled and did not move. He could read her so easily. Rebellion, disgust, murderous hatred, panic terror, were all there. He took pleasure in holding her to the spot, so that all she could do was mechanically sip her wine. He doubted if she tasted it. What a waste of a superb wine!

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a long time now, my dear,” he said, “and now is as good a time as any. Of course you may have guessed. You are one of the young ladies I have chosen to breed with my Servant. You and your cousin Siri, as a matter of fact. But since you are here, we will take you first. You are going to be the mother of my future Servants. Say thank you, my dear. It is a great privilege.”

  “Thank you, sire,” Vierran found herself whispering. No! she thought. No, no, no, no! But she could not say it.

  Reigner One increased pressure on her, augmented the pressure by his instruments, and continued, “The Servant, as you know, is on Earth, where he seems to have become inadvertently caught in the field of an antiquated machine. When we get to Earth, I am going to send you into that field after him. You are ordered to find him there and breed with him.”

  Vierran found herself whispering, “Yes, sire.”

  “Mind you do,” said Reigner One. “If you disobey this command, there will be painful consequences for the rest of your family. You are to go into the field and make a child with my Servant. Is that clear, Vierran?”

  Vierran struggled against the force she could feel him putting on her. It did no good. All she was able to say was, “What fun, sire.” Almost as if she meant it.

  Resistance. Reigner One’s lips pursed. But here Reigner Three came sailing back among the golden screens, and the Controller heaved up from the other side to say the portal was phased and ready. Reigner One let the puny resistance pass. He drained his goblet and got to his feet. “Good, good,” he said. “Come along, Vierran.”

  This casts a whole new light on Father’s arrest! Vierran thought, as she put down her goblet mostly full and trailed among the screens and the officials to the portal. She wondered what this Controller would do if she seized his pudgy hands and begged him to help her. But she knew she would do nothing. Her fear was gone. In its place was a huge flat emptiness with voices crying of death faintly in its distances. All she had heard of the mothers of the Servants echoed in those cries. They gave you drugs so that you had as many babies as possible. The babies were taken away surgically. After that you were never heard of again.

  The portal yawned in front of her. She picked up the bags and followed the two Reigners through.

  Associate Controller Giraldus was there in Albion to meet the party, more efficient than ever. He knew these were the two Reigners who really mattered.

  “Excellencies!” He and his assistants bowed like grass on a green bank waving. “I take it, Excellencies, you wish me to open our local portal for you to Earth. To the Hexwood Farm library complex, will it be, Excellencies?”

  Reigner One smiled genially. He wondered why Five had left this fellow alive. One could always get Runcorn to send one home, after all. He toyed with the idea of telling Giraldus that they were actually on their way to Runcorn to sort out the flint crisis. He would have to do that anyway – but later. The bannus took priority. And unlike the others, Reigner One intended to approach it with extreme caution. “Well, no,” he said. “We want to arrive at what I believe is called a train station. The nearest one to Hexwood, if you please.”

  Giraldus was not for a moment thrown out. “Certainly. Excellency. Just one moment while I recalibrate the portal,” he said, and went with swift important strides to reset the controls. Reigner One watched how long it took him. Only seconds. The man was too efficient by half. And Vierran, after that resistance of hers, ought to be taught a lesson.

  Reigner One waited until the portal had opened and Giraldus had turned smugly from the control panel, and terminated Giraldus there and then. He did not watch the smug smile turn to hurt amazement and then to horror as Giraldus realised he had ceased to breathe. He watched Vierran stare as the man’s face turned blue. He did not say, “That’s what will happen to your father, my dear, if you disobey me.” He did not need to. He motioned her politely through the portal after Reigner Three. “After you, Vierran.”

  Vierran went with her head turned over her shoulder, watching Giraldus choke and fold at the knees. She entered Earth like someone entering an abyss.

  Reigner One smiled and gestured with his hat to a taxi waiting outside Hexwood station.

  They drove to the motel on the outskirts of Hexwood Farm estate. “What is this?” Reigner Three demanded when she saw the collection of low brick buildings.

  “A sort of inn. We own it as a matter of fact,” Reigner One told her.

  “Then we own something remarkably like a place to keep pigs in,” said Three.

  She was very discontented. It took Vierran nearly two hours and much patience to get Reigner Three arranged in her room to Reigner Three’s liking. Then it took another hour to get Reigner Three changed into the misty sea-green draperies she thought fit to wear to eat supper in.


  Just as well, Vierran thought drearily. I think I might go mad without her to take my mind off things.

  “Are you coming to supper? In those clothes?” Reigner Three asked.

  “No thanks. I’m not hungry, ma’am. I think I’ll go to my room and rest,” Vierran said.

  I don’t know what One’s said to her, but it’s certainly pricked her little bubble! Reigner Three thought. About time someone did! She was almost as ripe for termination as that fellow in Albion!

  Reigner Three took care to be sure that Vierran was indeed lying on her bed, watching something called Neighbours on the flat, flickering entertainment box, and then made her way to join Reigner One in a place called The Steak Bar. Here they were served what seemed to Reigner Three a singularly ill-tasting meal.

  “This is a hovel,” she told Reigner One in their own language. “I warn you – I am not pleased!”

  “Neither am I.”

  Reigner One moved his prawn cocktail in order to inspect with wonder the picture of a stagecoach on the mat beneath. “You were not supposed to bring Vierran, my dear. There was a moment when I was quite angry. You see, as it happened I had just dispatched all her family here along with the other disaffected House-heads. My aim was to isolate Vierran on Homeworld in order to breed her to the Servant when we bring him back.”

  “Then you should have told me!” snapped Reigner Three. “Whatever did you send the House-heads here for?”

  “To have them under my eye. To show them who is Reigner. And to draggle their fine feathers a little,” said Reigner One. “I sent them by the trade routes in an empty flint transport. They should be arriving around now at our factory just north of this place. They will not be served even with such a poor dinner as this.”