“Stop! Stop the sleigh!”
Johrun tried to protest. “No, don’t . . . Feel fine . . .” But the splice gave no heed to his words. Lutramella wrestled him upright.
Johrun found himself somehow stretched out on a blanket on the snow. Blurry faces peered down at him in a ring from above. Was that Minka? He tried to lift a hand to caress her cheek, but his arm flopped down after rising only a few centimeters. He knew there were pressing matters of great importance which he must be attending to. Didn’t his father want him to check that the herples had not all flown away into space on their gossamer wings? How would Sweetmeats Pasturage survive?
And then darkness and unconsciousness came down.
Johrun awoke to a familiar chimeric paw on his forehead, much as when he had been sick as a child, and the words, “His skin feels normal now.”
He opened his eyes. Lutramella and Taryn Endelwode were beside him, one on each side of a raised pallet. They had divested themselves of their heavy outerwear.
Johrun knew himself to be naked, lying atop and under furs. The walls and ceiling and floor of his room were fashioned from ice of indeterminate thickness. Daylight came through cutout windows in opposite walls, covered with tightly pinned hides scraped to translucency. A small spherical bone brazier on legs radiated a paltry warmth from some glowing moss visible behind its slotted facade.
“Where am I? What happened?”
Lutramella said, “We are at the Spires. You remained unconscious for the last two days of travel, and for another day here.”
Johrun tried to sit up but failed. Taryn said, “He’s still weak. He needs food. Something hot.” She got up and left.
“What was the matter with me?”
“Celestro has a theory. He feels that your Veranonal nanomites came into conflict with the Itaskan Suppressor nanomites. They were at war with each other.”
“Why weren’t you affected?”
“As a splice, my physiology includes sartorized workarounds to accommodate frequent displacements to other owners on other planets. And whatever species of internal mites Celestro and Taryn harbor did not provoke such an attack.”
Taryn returned, bearing a steaming bowl of what proved to be fish soup. Celestro followed right behind her. Johrun managed to sit up, propped against a heap of furs. He took the bowl and gratefully downed half the broth in one gulp.
“Who healed me? Lu, was it you? Celestro? Taryn? Does Honko Drowne have a doctor in residence?”
Taryn began to giggle. Lutramella looked away. Celestro coughed into the crook of his elbow.
Lutramella finally answered. “It was Cupuni.”
“Cupuni? But how?”
“She recognized your symptoms and knew just what to do, possibly from seeing other victims. She shared her Itaskan internal biome with you, endowing you with her immunity and effecting a new equilibrium.”
“How so?”
Taryn laughed. “She fucked the living daylights out of you! That’s how she passed the gut bugs. What a show! I’ve never seen such tongue work, even during the sharing days of Apma Tagaro back home! She was all over you like stink on swamp orchid! Even though you were mostly insensible, you cooperated like a puppet. A very enthusiastic puppet. Wow!”
Celestro sought to drape a dignified mantle about the event. “Really, Vir Corvivios, your dignity remains intact. We all averted our gaze.”
“I certainly didn’t!” Taryn countered.
Johrun felt utterly mortified. Also, the image of Cupuni’s bloody lips resurfaced. But when he considered that death was the probable alternative to having been the subject of such a lubricious public display, his chagrin began to dissipate.
As if to bolster Johrun’s shifting sentiments, Celestro said, “There was no other option. None of our archaic drugs did a thing.”
“Well, I hope someone thanked her properly.”
“Oh, we were saving that job for you!” Taryn said.
Johrun developed a sudden preoccupation with the rest of his soup. When he had finished, he said, “If I might have some privacy, I’d like to get up and get dressed. I assume Drowne knows why we’re here.”
“Not in detail. That diplomatic conversation falls also to you.”
“I’m ready.”
Celestro and Taryn obligingly left the room. Johrun threw back the furs and got to his feet. A bit unsteady, he improved as he moved about. Lutramella helped him dress, including his underjacket. Away from the little brazier, the room of ice maintained its chill. Johrun was careful to strap on his poignard, for whatever good it might do him. He noticed that Lu wore hers.
“This chamber—are we in a house of some sort?”
“Best you see the arrangement for yourself. Follow me.”
The single doorway led to a kind of pantry and kitchen, with naturally refrigerated larder and fire-moss stove; this middle room also exhibited windows on each side. The subsequent doorway gave onto a parlor of sorts, chairs of bone and hide, and more windows in, say, what might be either the east and west or north and south walls. The exit from that room led directly to a curving staircase flush against the far exterior wall: steps carved into the ice, winding up and down.
“Honko Drowne awaits us below. But we can spare a minute to go to the rooftop.”
The climb was only another storey or two. The egress was straight up through a hatch in the roof as the stairs came to an end.
Johrun shivered as he stepped into the open air. But with a lack of wind and full sun, the temperature could be tolerated without heavy coats for a short while.
He and Lutramella stood upon the flat top of a polyhedral tower of ice, some twenty storeys high, no balustrade or parapet for protection. Scattered irregularly about within the radius typical of a large sports stadium were a dozen other such towers, shafts of pure ice rearing to the heavens.
“I have learned that they are a natural formation, a type of ice spike that grows upward from the ground over the millennia. Itaska has unique conditions allowing them to reach this incredible height. The Arnapkapfaaluk people never bothered with them, preferring to live on the ground with their worms. But under Drowne’s leadership, using imported hand tools, the spikes have been turned into habitations. Thus, the Spires.”
“So Drowne maintains some minimal contact with the Quinary ekumen, to secure such things as tools?”
“Apparently so. There are always providers of goods who are willing to overlook a criminal’s status to reap their profits. He likes to import both luxuries and necessities for himself and his wife.”
“His wife?”
“You’ll meet her in a moment. I will warn you, she’s a problem. I don’t like her, and I don’t think you will either. But let us go down now, and you can make your own judgments.”
“Will Celestro and Taryn accompany us?”
“I thought it best to have them hang back, until we solidify our own position with our host.”
“Very sensible, Lu.”
The descent down twenty storeys left Johrun’s weakened legs all aquiver. But once at ground level, while still in the stairwell, he summoned up all his courage and determination, massaged his sore calves, thrust back his shoulders, and entered Drowne’s quarters.
The ice walls and ceiling and floor were ameliorated by a profusion of carpets and hanging tapestries. A fire-moss chimenea cast a comfortable warmth—comfortable by Itaskan standards. On Verano, the temperature would have been considered incapacitating. Several Itaskans stood or lounged about like courtiers or functionaries. And on two large chairs, almost thrones, sat Honko Drowne and his wife.
It was obvious how the substantial, barrel-chested Drowne had earned his nickname of “Red Lion of the Spires.” His wild hair, shot through with some threads of grey, was nonetheless a fiery corona. An untamed beard of the same bold auburn shade completed the effect of an encircling lion’s mane. His rough-hewn countenance evoked a bust by some primitivist artist.
Drowne’s wife was a native Itaskan
. But unlike every other member of that race whom Johrun had seen, she was enormous. A tall woman to begin with, she dominated her personal sphere with a bulk as large as her husband’s. Her fleshy face manifested a kind of avarice and willfulness. Unlike her comrades, she was clothed, in a robe of yellow and silver horizontal stripes, although her feet remained bare. An additional gesture of differentiation was the close cropping of her black hair.
Drowne’s narrow eyes of frosty pewter drilled into Johrun. The Red Lion of the Spires shot abruptly and impulsively to his feet, pointed at Johrun with arm outthrust, and bellowed, “Tell me why I should not have you killed where you stand, for the sins of your family!”
Had Johrun not recently been subjected to a similar confrontational greeting from Quinary Invigilator Oz Queloz; had he not lost the entirety of his patrimony, and all his loved ones save for Lutramella and Minka; had his marriage to his childhood sweetheart not been dissolved before it was even formalized; and had he not recently faced exile on Bodenshire, the harrowings of a wintry pilgrimage, and death through nanomite cascade—well, then perhaps Drowne’s accusatory shout might have seemed scary or life-threatening. But as matters stood, Johrun found— to his relief, surprise, satisfaction, and even pride—that the Red Lion’s verbal assault provoked not fear but laughter.
As Johrun’s hearty chortles crescendoed, Drowne gradually lowered his arm, perhaps realizing he looked foolish when his interlocutor would not play his assigned part.
“Are you mad?” asked the Red Lion. “Has your illness unbalanced your mind?”
Johrun wiped tears from his cheeks. “Far from it, Vir Drowne! I am coming into a kind of sanity, I think, for the first time in my life. And my freshborn clarified mentality reveals your question to be hollow, a sham. Why won’t you kill me on the spot? Because you haven’t! You could have let me die already, or cut my throat as I slept. But the fact that I am now standing here means you have no intention of taking my life—at least for the moment—and also that you might in fact welcome my presence, if only out of mere curiosity, or because you think that I might benefit you somehow.”
Drowne tried to glower for a moment, but gave it up for a bad job. Instead he climbed off his chair and came right up to Johrun. He clapped big hands on the younger man’s shoulders and regarded his face intently, before finally saying, “Yes, goddamn it, you are young Xul all over! Not so much in the face, but with his same spirit and powers of intellect! How I am carried back down the river of the years! I recall once when we were boys together on Hodak how that sly bastard got me to admit by syllogisms that I did not deserve my own girlfriend, just because he wanted her more.”
Here Drowne lapsed into a solemn frown again, discontinuing his friendly grip on Johrun’s shoulders. “And that incident, as well as others, should have warned me of the vile larceny he and Brayall Soldevere would perpetrate on me. The theft of my newly discovered world and the subsequent impugning of my character became a wrenching millstone around my neck that sent me down the hard path I still tread today. Reiver, plunderer, a wolf among sheep! A sad fate for a fellow who once dreamed only of a quiet cottage and a passel of brats. As one who shares my betrayer’s bloodline, Johrun Corvivios, you have much to atone for.”
Johrun ventured to take one of Drowne’s hands in both of his, an impulsive gesture of sincerity. “That ancient but still vivid crime is precisely why I’m here. Having learned of it only over the past few weeks, I have made it my mission to undo it, insofar as I can, and to save the world we both cherish.”
Drowne looked at once suspicious and hopeful. “What do you mean?”
“Let us sit down, and I will explain. It’s a long story.”
Drowne waved at his minions and chairs were brought for both Johrun and Lutramella.
Throughout this fraught introduction, Drowne’s wife had registered everything with a concentrated focus but without participating. Now Drowne made a substantial nod toward her and said, “This is my wife, Akna. Her wise counsel forms fully half of my resources. So if she asks you to expand or clarify, do so with all alacrity!”
Akna spoke. “I would know the status of this odd creature who accompanies you. I mislike her looks. Is she your consort?”
“No, Mir Drowne. She is my lifelong advisor and friend. Without her, I would be lost.”
“She reminds me of one of those fierce martens of the nunatak crags, who can filch a bit of meat right out of the jaws of a lupalik.”
“I assure you, Mir Drowne, her ethics are impeccable.”
Content to let Johrun make her defense, Lutramella said nothing, but merely showed many teeth in a grin.
Akna appeared to accept this reassurance for the moment.
Johrun composed his mind and began to tell his tale.
The account stretched on for much longer than he had intended. But Drowne paid close attention throughout.
After he had finished, Drowne said, “You seek my help to clarify the status of Verano, to preserve it from unknown interlopers. You think I might come into my rightful ownership of the world at last, and perhaps save you a small place there. I accept your formulations and requests as honest. And I do offer my genuine sympathies for the deaths of your family members. Much as I came to hate the names of Corvivios and Soldevere over the rueful decades, such a treacherous ending against which no man could fight was ignoble. Although it was swift and painless, and thus more lenient than what I often envisioned for them!”
Johrun said, “I appreciate your commiserations, Vir Drowne, and take them in the spirit in which they are given.”
“Enough with honorifics! After all, in some sense I am almost your infamous bad uncle, am I not? Call me Honko.”
“With pleasure.”
Drowne dragged fingers thoughtfully through his rufous beard. “Back to your request. To do as you ask would involve exposing myself to the dogs of the Quinary who want my hide. I’d risk losing all I have here, for an uncertain future. I’m basically content and happy now, in my exile and retirement. The scope of my ambitions has dwindled, the itch for plunder and revenge has been quelled. The theft of Verano happened a long, long time ago. No, the risk is too great.”
Akna Drowne smiled hugely, plainly pleased by Johrun’s obvious discomfiture and the denial of his plea.
Johrun sensed all his goals rapidly slipping out of reach. “If only I could assume some of the risk for you, I would do so in an instant!”
Akna Drowne leapt into the opening provided by Johrun’s hasty proclamation.
“Husband, why not gauge how reliable a partner this boy would be by assigning him a test? Let him risk something big, although he cannot share in your specific dangers, as a measure of his courage. You have tested your lieutenants similarly in the past to good effect.”
Johrun had an instant fancy of being compelled to wrestle an ice worm, or make love to Cupuni again. “What would convince you of my willingness to share all our mutual hazards?”
Challenged, Honko Drowne did not make an immediate proposal, allowing Akna to lean over and whisper in his ear. Drowne’s face brightened.
“I have just the test. Tomorrow at dawn, you will climb one of the Spires. Hand over hand, up the outside walls. If you reach the top, I will reconsider my participation in your quest.”
Before he could quail or equivocate, Johrun forced himself slowly to rise and said, “I accept!”
“Excellent! At least you show spirit. We will see tomorrow if your decisiveness and physical prowess correspond. And if you survive, we will have a big celebration! A banquet! I understand your traveling companion—Sinestro? Cilantro?—is some kind of entertainer. He will do his act for us. We are not exactly on the main circuit for performers here.”
Johrun said, “I’d like to rest for the remainder of the day, if I might.”
“Certainly. But let me show you just one of my treasures. It has relevance, should you decide to try to make an early departure without meeting your obligations.”
Drowne c
onducted Johrun and Lutramella outside. Akna and some of the other Itaskans accompanied them.
The cold hit Johrun like a shovel across the face. Although also underdressed for outside temperatures, Drowne seemed not to mind it so much, having no doubt adapted over the years of his tenancy here. But Lutramella too was shivering.
The Red Lion led the party to an open space some distance away from the Spires.
“Summon Tizheruk!” he commanded.
One of the Itaskans started to dance. His intricate heavy steps involved lots of exaggerated patterned thumping on the resonant ice.
In a short while Johrun heard the by-now-familiar crunching, grinding, splintering sound of the underground passage of a worm.
The eruption of the arriving worm was even more spectacular than that which had greeted the visitors back at the brane-ship, a veritable fountaining of flinders, powder, and hail, for this worm, colored like a piece of green driftglass, was easily twice the size of that other creature, or eight times the size of the sleigh worms.
Drowne moved to proudly pet the flanks of the glossy half-erect giant. “My darling! She can cover five hundred miles in a day, and track down any quarry. I have a special carriage which she hauls at top speeds. But no such guidance is needed when she mercilessly hunts down any off-planet visitors who unwisely decide to depart by night before I bid them farewell!”
CHAPTER 14
Lutramella had always recommended the value of learning handicrafts. They taught dexterity and concentration. In his youth, Johrun had been introduced to fiber arts and pottery making, wood carving, and bead stringing. In his cluttered bedroom back at Sweetmeats Pasturage hung a lopsided blanket he had woven. He had enjoyed these hobby pursuits to varying degrees, without any of them becoming a passion. But certainly he had never imagined that knowing how to sew might someday save his life.
Lutramella finished cutting up one of the tough blankets they had brought with them from the ship. The strong light-weight insulating fabric had yielded reluctantly to the edge of her poignard, and Johrun found that pushing a needle through it required using the underside of a bone saucer rather than his sore thumb. But despite these impediments, they were making good progress on turning Johrun’s shell jacket and outermost snow pants into what might, with luck, serve as a makeshift wingsuit. Accordion’d pie slices of fabric under the arms and between the legs had to be fashioned so as to still allow for a free range of climbing movements, and the improvisational tailors had had to take apart and redo the design a couple of times. Now the evening was growing late, and they hurried so as allow for some much-needed rest.
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