Lee Shores

by Rachel Ford

  “Morning, Katherine,” she returned. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Like a dream.”

  “Good.”

  Frank rolled his eyes. “Are you two ready for breakfast? Before I lose my appetite, I mean?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Alright,” Frank said as we all piled into the car, “I suppose we might as well address the elephant in the room: everyone here knows about F’riya and Ger.”

  F’riya blushed a little, glancing anxiously at Maggie and me.

  “Don’t worry about them,” he smiled. “It was Kay who figured it out.”

  Her anxiety morphed into surprise. “You did?”

  “Kind of,” I said. “It was a lucky guess, really.”

  “As long as I didn’t give it away,” F’rok grinned.

  “You didn’t,” I assured him.

  “And your secret is safe with me,” Maggie promised.

  The younger Inkaya brother laughed. “Two days on-world, and we’re already making a proper Inkaya of you.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “Keeping family secrets? It doesn’t get more Kudarian than that.”

  Frank and Maggie exchanged glances, and then Maggie and I did while F’riya caught her elder brother’s eye. F’rok frowned. “What? I’m obviously missing something here. And the only one out of the loop. What’s going on?”

  “So, uh…about my betrothal,” Frank sighed. It was a lead-in to a story that in turns left the youngest Inkaya sibling laughing and gaping.

  “You mean…you made the whole thing up?”

  “Well…yeah, as a matter of fact, I did.”

  “It’s brilliant – but why lie to mom and dad?”

  “Come on, F’rok. You know how they are. They wouldn’t have taken no for an answer, and I’d be betrothed to a woman I literally hadn’t met until last night otherwise.”

  He nodded slowly. “You’re not wrong. Still…wow.”

  “You won’t say anything, will you?” F’riya asked.

  “Hell, of course not. I’m not getting involved if I can help it.”

  Frank laughed, clapping his brother on the shoulder. “Thanks, F’rok.”

  His brother fixed him with a piercing look. “But you’re not really with Magdalene?”

  He shook his head. “Magdalene’s actually seeing someone else.”

  “Wow. You guys sure fooled us all.”

  “Sorry,” Frank apologized. “It just…happened. I needed a cover story to bail me out, and that was the one I came up with.”

  F’rok grinned. “Don’t apologize. It’s awesome.”

  We spent the rest of the trip to the Britya holdings answering F’rok and F’riya’s questions. They were impressed with Frank for pulling a fast one on their parents, and disappointed in themselves for not catching it sooner.

  “I did know something was up, at least,” F’riya consoled herself.

  “She did,” I confirmed. “Almost got it out of me, too.”

  She grinned, and Frank shook his head. “I should have known never to match wits with you, sis.”

  “I was clueless,” F’rok lamented.

  “You’d probably have done better,” the elder Inkaya observed dryly, “if you’d kept your nose out of books.”

  We reached Ger’s family house a few minutes later, and the young man was waiting for us. He stepped into the car looking very nervous, and the expression was not much eased by his wife’s introduction. “Magdalene and Kay, this is my husband, Ger. F’er, you know him already, but not as your brother.”

  “No,” Frank said, extending his hand to clasp the still standing Ger’s. “But I’m happy to welcome you to the family, Ger.”

  A relieved smile spread across the young man’s face. “Thanks, F’er.”

  “And love, this is Magdalene – F’er’s fake fiancée – and Kay – their friend.” We all shot her surprised glances, but she shrugged. “Ger already knows. And your secret’s safe with him.”

  He nodded briskly as he settled in beside his wife. “Completely safe,” he assured. “Wild kreslons couldn’t drag it from me.”

  The trip to Kriar was spent in increasingly lively banter as we got to know one-another. “Well,” Frank declared as we rolled through the countryside, “we’re a car full of liars. That’s for sure.”

  We all laughed. “I don’t think F’riya and I are lying so much as concealing. Is it lying to hide the truth?” Ger countered.

  “Definitely,” Frank nodded.

  “Without a doubt,” Maggie put in.

  “In fact, you’re the worst liars of us all.”

  They laughed. “Are you sure you two aren’t a couple?” F’riya teased. “You think of one mind.”

  Only F’rok, I noticed, was silent throughout much of the exchanges. At times he seemed preoccupied, his thoughts far away. Then, he would return to the conversation, laughing and joking, only to drift away again.

  Something was on the young man’s mind, and I hoped it was not guilt. We still had our entire stay with Frank’s family ahead of us, and I couldn’t imagine how quickly it would turn into a mess if they found out about the deception we’d played on them.

  “So where are we going?” I asked during a lull in conversation. “I mean, I know you said Kriar, but to anything in particular? Or are we just going to explore the city?”

  He shook his head. “Some of that, sure. But we’re going to start at Warrior’s Park.”

  “Warrior’s Park?”

  “It’s the site of Kriar’s water organ.”

  “Kriar’s what?”

  “Water organ. Every major Kudarian city has one.”

  “At least one,” F’riya put in.

  “It’s a giant, hydro- and solar-powered organ, set to play on the turn of every hour. It’s programmed to play different songs. We’ll get there in time to hear the Requiem of the Warriors.”

  “Kind of a martial theme going on,” I observed.

  “It’s a memorial park.”

  “Ah.”

  F’rok snorted. “All Kudarian parks are memorials. Apparently, we are incapable of enjoying nature without thinking about dead people.”

  We reached Warrior’s Park as a smallish crowd was trickling in. It was a sprawling, green expanse, nestled in between a landscape of glittering buildings and gleaming facades. The park was naturally divided by two distinct elevations in one direction, and the river that cut through it in the opposite. We were in the public quarter.

  “The higher elevations are reserved for state and permitted use,” Frank explained. “And that one-” He gestured to the far bank. “Is for reserved use. It’s rented for weddings, celebrations, and so on.”

  The change in elevation, though, served as more than a natural barrier. It made the park’s signature attraction, the water organ, possible. As the river cascaded from the higher level to the lower, it created a dramatic waterfall, some ten meters high.

  And it was here that the organ apparatus was built. Great silver pipes stretched out of the water downriver, catching the mid-morning light. Directly below the falls, barely visible under the rush of water, were a series of hooded wheels.

  “There’s submerged air tanks in the riverbed,” Frank explained. “They’re fed from the intake, over there.” He gestured to an unobtrusive ornament, depicting a set of figures among trees. I realized, on second glance, that the statues concealed a grate – and, no doubt, beneath it, a large pipe, shielded from rain and the elements by the canopy of marble trees overhead.

  “When each new hour breaks…” He continued, pointing to a small solar array. “The orchestrator system kicks in. There’s a little computer there, very primitive; all it does is cycle songs and move the organ pieces into place every fifty minutes. In about two minutes, it’s going start.”

  My engineer’s brain was in overdrive. “Really? So what drives the organ? Is it hydropower, or the orchestrator?”

  “Hydropower. The orchestrator determines how much
water to let hit the turbines. It controls the shields, and draws them back as needed. Depending on how much water gets to them, the turbines move faster or slower; and they push the air out – harder or softer – based on how much energy is generated.”

  “Each turbine controls a note?” I wondered. There was dozens of them, hiding under their glimmering shields. And each corresponded to one of the pipes protruding from the river.

  “Yup.”

  “And the orchestrator tells it which note to play, and how, based on how much water hits the turbines?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wait until you hear it. It’s unlike anything you’ve heard before.”

  He was right. The turn of the hour came, and a quiet ticking sounded from the orchestrator. All at once, a subset of the hooded shields drew back. The turbines began to spin.

  And then, in tones that seemed to cut right through me until they hit bone, the music began. Low and otherworldly, something like a cross between a cry and a song, it rose slowly, languishing in the moment. And then it sounded louder, higher. I felt the hairs on the nape of my neck stand on end.

  I understood how this was a requiem for departed warriors. It drew me, one note at a time, out of the sunshine of the present, to dark days of dark choices. As those sonorous tones spilled across our breathless group of listeners, I remembered the stories I’d read as a child, of King Arthur and his knights, of Mordred and Morgana, of dark magic and betrayal, of the battle of Camlann. This song had been composed with other warriors on another world in mind.

  But the haunting tones that brought my mind to Avalon and Camelot worked their magic on my companions. I didn’t know what blood-soaked fields Frank envisioned, but I saw the same faraway, misty-eyed look in his eyes as I felt come over my own. I saw tears form in Maggie’s, and I slipped a hand discreetly in hers.

  It was a language that spoke to us in our own languages, in our own myths; and yet made itself understood by all of us. It was a language that needed no translation matrix to be comprehended.

  A part of me wished High Priest Akura could be here. Not even he, I thought, could fail to be impressed by the universality of this experience.

  Then, I remembered what a pretentious prig the man was, and dismissed the idea. Still, I had to pause to catch my breath when the song wrapped up. We all did, I think. Because no one spoke while the shields settled back into place over the water turbines. No one spoke while the orchestrator went into standby.

  And when Maggie did break the silence to remark, “That was beautiful,” her voice was thick with emotion.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The soberness that settled on our party was short-lived. We were laughing again by time we reached the vehicle.

  “So what’s next?” I asked.

  “We’ve still got a few hours before lunch,” F’riya said. “How’d you like a tour of the city?”

  F’rok nodded. “The architecture here goes back many centuries, and several millennia on the original site of Kriar. It’s one of the better-preserved ancient settlements in North Kudar.”

  I exchanged glances with Mags, and we both nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

  We spent several hours exploring the oldest parts of the city, first driving through the government district and its stoic, stone-faced buildings, and then leaving the car in public parking to explore on foot when we reached the first settlements.

  The buildings here varied in size, from great and grand to small and humble. But they were all well-preserved. Some were still inhabited, and others had been cordoned off with plaques set in front of them. They were in Kudarian, so I had to rely on my companions for translations. Maggie had a passing knowledge of the language. “The birthplace of Teyia arn altora,” she read outside one single-story dwelling. “Maintained under Cultural Preservation Charter Twelve.”

  “Teyia was an early Kudarian warrior poet,” F’rok explained. “From the First Era. Her poetry is still recognized as some of the finest examples of its kind. And she was a legendary fighter.”

  “Women were not allowed in most Kudarian militaries, in the First Era,” F’riya added. “She pledged her service to King Athel before the Battle of West Kriar. The king laughed, and told his guard to remove her.”

  F’riya’s eyes twinkled. “So she challenged him: ‘Send your best man to do it. And if he can, kill me. But if I defeat him, I can ride with you into battle.’

  “He sent two of his best, and she killed them both.”

  The two dead men was a grimmer end to the story than I’d anticipated. Still, I’d known Frank long enough to know that most Kudarian stories did end with blood. “So she joined him?”

  F’rok shook his head. “No. Athel was furious. One of the men was his nephew, Aethir. He banished Teyia, on pain of death.”

  “Oh.” It was not only dark, but getting darker. I was almost afraid to ask, but curiosity won. “So…what happened to her?”

  “Athel died in the Battle of West Kriar,” Frank explained. “His entire House was destroyed. There were no survivors.”

  “Wow.”

  “The new king, Karus, heard of the woman warrior who had defeated Athel’s men. He found her and offered her a place in his House, as the chief of his bodyguards. She rode with him from then on, and wrote of the battles they had – the ones they won, and the ones they lost.”

  “Some of their losses,” F’rok put in, “inspired her best work.”

  “That’s a very cool story,” I decided. It was dark, like most ancient war stories, but beautiful too.

  “It gets even more interesting,” he said. “When she found a lover, Karus allowed her a special dispensation.”

  “A dispensation? Why?”

  “To grant her the legal status of a male.” F’rok grinned. “Her lover was a woman. And under Kudarian law of the First Era, only a man could take a wife.”

  “It was a legal loophole. The king couldn’t change the law to allow women to marry – there was too much opposition to that. Hell, it didn’t even happen across all our Kudarian worlds until we joined the Union. But he could change her legal standing.”

  “That’s pretty brilliant.”

  “Yeah. Until we joined the Union, and Kudar had to recognize the Union Charter of Rights, there were still areas of South Kudar and Vi’rek where the ‘Teyia clause’ was the only way same-sex couples could wed: one partner would have to legally change their status.” F’rok shook his head. “It’s ridiculous to think that not even a hundred years ago, people still had to go through that.”

  “If she was recognized legally as a man,” Maggie wondered, “why do we call her by feminine pronouns?”

  “Oh, she was a woman. After her wife passed away, she changed her status back.”

  “Ah.”

  “It was just a loophole, to allow her to get married.”

  We spent a few more minutes at the site of this groundbreaking Kudarian’s birth. It was, in truth, a humble residence. The style was largely unchanged from modern homes, but it was small and squat. Still, there was a sense of history here, and our hosts seemed to feel it keenly. F’rok, I thought, had a particular affinity to the scholars. We’d already passed the residences or birthplaces of several great warriors of lore, but they did not affect him the way the monuments to his peoples’ poets and mathematicians did.

  We meandered through a maze of city streets before calling it a morning, and I saw more ancient architecture in a few hours than I thought I had ever seen in my life. We walked around the perimeter of a Second Era Vice Chancellor’s cottage. We peeked into the windows of buildings closed for maintenance under the Cultural Preservation charters. We even toured the summer palace of Queen Yulanda – what was left of it, following the siege of 1250, anyway.

  It was more history than I’d ever be able to remember in one morning, but I wasn’t being tested; so I enjoyed it. This was an experience I wasn’t likely to forget soon.

  In the meantime, tho
ugh, I’d worked up quite an appetite on our tour. Everyone had.

  “Next stop,” Frank said. “Lunch. And tomorrow we can take the train to one of the larger provinces. You two can pick. Then next week, we can rent a shuttle for South Kudar.”

  “You’ll like South Kudar,” Ger agreed. “It’s like the north, but warmer.”

  “And the beaches,” F’riya nodded. “They’re divine.”

  “You guys should come with us,” Maggie suggested. “I mean, travel with us at least.” She grinned at F’riya and Ger. “I know you two would rather do couple-things than babysit us, but it’d be a good way for the pair of you to get away for a while. Without raising your parents’ suspicion.”

  “That’s good thinking,” Frank nodded. “If we’re all going, they won’t wonder about it.”

  F’riya smiled and Ger nodded. “I like that. We can figure out how we’re going to tell them. But, in the meantime, it’ll be nice to get away.”

  “What about you, F’rok?” I asked. The young man was standing silently to the side, a pensive expression painted on his face. “You coming with us?”

  “Me?” He seemed surprised by the question.

  “Of course,” F’riya said.

  “You weren’t thinking of standing us up, were you?” Frank wondered, an eyebrow arched in mock annoyance.

  “No…that is…you sure you want me with you? I don’t really like the beach. And you all have plans, and things to do. I’d probably be in the way more than anything.”

  He was promptly and soundly pshaw’ed into a grinning compliance. “Alright, alright, I’ll go.”

  “You’d better,” Frank said. “There’s only so much time I can spend with my fake girlfriend before she dumps me for real.”

  Frank picked a pretty little café overlooking an artificial pool. When he mentioned his name, the server led us to seats on the patio by the water. “Sometimes,” he confided with a smirk, “being an Inkaya has its perks.”