by Richard Fox
“My writ.” Elsime’s voice trembled as she brushed fingertips over her gossamer thin veil as was custom, then removed a silver signet ring—the heraldry of her clan—from her apron and held it up toward the Den Mother. “My endorsement from the Service College is engraved and—”
“Calm down. The fastest way to lose this position is to draw any attention to yourself, but they taught you this?” the older woman said.
“‘The Quill must be silent,’ yes, Den Mother Virid,” Elsime said.
“You know who I am?” One of Virid’s eyebrows perked. “As you should. Elsime of Huross…northern lands. Yours pay the tithe with hydrocarbons…and fish. This position must not have come cheaply for your clan’s Den Mother. You’ve missed a season?”
Elsime felt her cheeks flush, and she was almost certain Virid noted the embarrassment.
“I went fallow to complete my Quill studies. My fast was complete and the doctors are certain my next season will be…available.”
“Clan Huross…the Duke is your father?”
“Yes, Den Mother.”
“Interesting.” Virid narrowed her eyes slightly and Elsime felt like a jewel being inspected for flaws. Elsime knew she was in King’s Rest as a debutante, but she hadn’t thought it would feel so…blatant. Not after the years of schooling and suffering through a barren season to qualify for the position. Her mother had been very clear that Elsime could do more for the clan as a Quill who would eventually be married off to the right family, not doled out to secure business deals like many of her sisters.
“I am here to serve,” Elsime said, and her throat went dry.
“Not every word will be recorded, you understand this.” Virid bent her fingers to right angles and touched the tips together. “The King is fond of discussions. You will only record what must be sent.”
“I know the signs.” Elsime bowed her chin slightly.
“Good, the rest of the party are on their way in. Take your spot.” Virid rapped a code against the door and Elsime memorized it out of habit.
A Close Guardsman opened the door. The Royal caste was tall and well built, a match for even the fierce Blooded that her clan employed as guards back home. He glanced over the two, then let them in.
Elsime’s breath caught as she saw the Sanctum with her own eyes. She knew the King’s chamber from countless TV broadcasts and from plays that made sets of the space. A wooden desk inlaid with intricate panels bearing each god’s visage was at the far end, and stained-glass windows rose behind it, the constellations of the night sky from the moment the dynasty began captured in the amber-colored glass.
Portraits of past battles covered the walls. One—closest to the stained-glass windows—was incomplete: the kingdom’s forces in tanks overlooking a cliff to a bare patch of canvas. The unfinished portion should have shown the moment that nuclear fire destroyed the Slavers’ island stronghold far to the east…but instead, there was emptiness.
Elsime’s lips pressed into a line. Why hadn’t she ever seen this before?
A burnished gold rug sat beneath the desk, and smaller circular rugs of similar design and color were arrayed in two arcs out from the desk. One on the far left bore a stool and a small writing stand.
Virid put a hand on the small of Elsime’s back and gave her a gentle push to her station.
A tall-backed chair rotated towards them and the King craned his neck to look back at Virid. He looked older than Elsime thought he would, with flecks of grey in the black of his ketafik. His hair was slightly unkempt and a glass of ice-laden alcohol was in one hand.
“This is the Huross Quill?” he asked.
“Yes, sire. Well recommended and well received.” Virid went straight to the King and began drawing his hair into a ponytail, snapping gold hoops into its length.
Elsime hurried to the writing stand and rolled out the paper within the leather scroll case. She fixed the edge to the desk with a brass rod and set out her inkwell and quill. She’d done this thousands of times during her schooling, and the routine gave her a bit of confidence. She scored the highest marks for transcribing the First Vision. She could record a King’s council.
She hoped. She prayed.
Marshal Hawn’ru, an older Blooded, stood on a rug close to the King’s spot. His uniform coat was thick with medals, and rumor was that he had to have an assistant wear the overflow of awards he’d earned during the Just War. Maroon stripes stacked high off his left cuff, one for each ten enemies he’d killed and taken a trophy from.
In a shallow bowl-shaped seat with a thick cushion sat a Tyr in golden robes adorned with a wide sash with dozens of knotted cords attached in lines down its length. His eyes were unfocused as he rocked slightly back and forth. His head was bare; the dark ketafik that covered his scalp and came down over his face stopped at the bridge of his nose and just below his eyes.
High Speaker Osuda.
“There is a new energy here,” Osuda said.
“The Speaker is deep in an oaxa trance,” Virid said to Elsime.
“Then only his caste can record his words.” Elsime touched a quill to an inkwell and the pen drew in ink.
“This one’s prettier than the last,” Hawn’ru said. “You bring on the homely ones and they’ll be at the job longer.”
“Mind to your own caste,” Virid hissed at the Blooded and he chuckled.
“Want to bet on how long it’ll be until this one’s married off?” Hawn’ru asked the High Speaker. Osuda’s eyes widened slightly and he gripped the side of his chair like he was about to fall off.
“Don’t prod him,” the King said. “I think his trance comes from coastal oaxa. Bit deeper than usual.”
“I wonder why he needs to commune that deeply with the gods,” the marshal said with a shrug.
A hidden door opened next to Elsime, startling her. A Tyr in civilian clothes and Royal caste markings came through. He did a double take at Elsime, then gave Virid an ugly look.
“She checks out, Ciolsi,” the Den Mother said. “How can you be the spy chief and be surprised by this?”
“She wasn’t supposed to start until tomorrow.” The new arrival paced between the gaps in the rugs, not taking a spot.
“You’re the one that called this meeting.” The King swung his seat around and Elsime was surprised by just how…normal he looked. The thick braid that fell down his chest from the back of his head glittered with interwoven gold rings and thread, his silken shirt was unbuttoned at the top, and a sense of fatigue pressed down on his shoulders. His eyes were tired with the weariness of responsibility and doubt that she knew also plagued her father, no matter how well new oil rigs worked or how good harvests had been.
“Yes, quite.” Ciolsi reached into an ambary woven jacket and glanced at a gold plate on the King’s desk.
Virid lit a stick of incense on the plate and rubbed her palms together as Elsime set the tip of her quill on the parchment and began transcribing.
“King Menicus, as your Lord of Shadows,” Ciolsi began, “it is my duty to ensure there are no secrets from you in the lands you rule, as deemed fit by the perfection of the gods, by lineage and—”
“I was told this was an emergency meeting,” Menicus said. “Skip the formalities, and do forgive me for that, Den Mother.”
“If it is an emergency…” Virid crossed her arms.
“It seems that Doctor Farlas of the Royal University has gone on an unexpected sabbatical,” Ciolsi said. “He loaded up his car with a fair amount of research papers and is driving south from the Indisa campus.”
“Bless all beneath the gods’ eyes.” The King leaned back hard against his seat. “Is he going to defect?”
“We believe that’s his plan,” Ciolsi said. “He got into a shouting match with the campus master a few days earlier. Likely his own decision to travel to the heretic lands. I don’t believe this is a targeted recruitment.”
“And why do you believe that?” Marshal Hawn’ru asked. “The heretics have been poa
ching our best and brightest for years.”
“Because this is damn sloppy.” Ciolsi walked past the high priest and sniffed at the air. “The Speaker’s deep with the gods. Maybe they’ll weigh in on my assessment. Farlas is leaving a trail so obvious behind him that the blind could follow. Then there’s a rather expletive-laden rant that he put in the mail to the campus master.” From his jacket, he removed a sheet of paper bearing a fuzzy fax copy and handed it to the King. “Likely he believed he’d be safe behind heretic lines by the time it was delivered. My men have Indisa under close surveillance, which is how we found this and then located Farlas.”
“Farlas…I know that name,” Hawn’ru said.
“Third son of a minor nobility,” Virid said. “Though he has been an important part of the rocketry program and space-flight initiative.”
“He did the major lifting that got our capsule into space,” the King said after glancing at the letter and tossing it to the edge of his table. “He wasn’t the one I honored for that success, though.”
“Clan fathers and mothers bear all praise and blame,” Virid said, invoking one of the Tyr’s oldest adages.
“Seems he wants some of that praise,” Ciolsi said. “And he’s not eligible for a more senior position until three other scientists ahead of him pass away. Besides being impatient and egotistical…he’s integral to the space program.”
“If he goes to work for the heretics,” Hawn’ru said, stroking his chin, “they may overtake us. Might beat us to a moon landing. They do that and there will be a flood of talent out of the kingdom.”
“They see him too,” the high priest said, his voice lilting. “They see him too.”
Elsime lifted her quill as the priest spoke and blew air over the drying ink of her transcription.
“We need to make an example out of him,” Hawn’ru said. “Convince others with similar notions not to make the same mistake.”
“I can have him taken care of privately,” the spy master said.
“You’d have one of our most brilliant minds snuffed out so easily?” The King steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “Farlas has no love for the heretics. He wouldn’t have worked for decades to improve our rocket technology to the point where we now have two Tyr orbiting the planet. We need him.”
“Forcing him to work on the moon mission would be futile,” Ciolsi said and the King canted his head to one side, anger rising. “He inserts a single wrong calculation into the launch mathematics? Lets a design flaw ‘accidentally’ pass his inspection? We’d have to put more resources on him to ensure he’s doing correct work than would be worth the effort.”
“Easier just to kill him,” Hawn’ru said.
“But if he was made the head of the project with all the honors that come with it?” the King asked.
Hawn’ru, Ciolsi, and Virid glanced at each other.
“Three different scientists are lords above him,” Virid said.
“Then we get them out of the way and Farlas will give us his best efforts, won’t he?” The King tossed his hands up. “Have Farlas arrested. Bring him to the capital and we’ll convince him of the errors of his ways in the dungeon while Ciolsi and Virid arrange for a series of retirements. After the capsule returns to ground.”
“Significantly more work for me…but as you command, sire,” Ciolsi said.
“Is that solved?” Hawn’ru asked. “Because our radiation buoys in the West Sea have gone offline. Again.”
“I thought the design flaw was fixed,” the King said.
“I’m done thinking design flaws are behind it,” the marshal said. “The Islander caste must be destroying them. One bomber raid on one of their barges will get the message across.”
“What message would that be? That we want a new war?” the King asked.
“The Islanders are weak,” Ciolsi said. “We know they’re in the middle of a civil war. Perhaps if we seize the Dolta archipelago…it will convince them and the heretics that we’re not to be toyed with.”
“We take the Dolta and then we have another half-million mouths to feed,” said the King. “Environmental remediation of the Slaver lands has already put a strain on the budget. And I don’t want to find out that the Islanders recovered some of the lost nuclear warheads when a bright-white flash of light goes off—” He jerked a thumb at the stained-glass window. “How valuable are those buoys anyway?”
“Cost prohibitive, and we lose one out of five freighters we send into the Storm Seas,” Hawn’ru said. “The gods prefer that the Islanders inhabit those wind-blasted rocks.”
“The radiation data is what we need,” Virid said. “Just how long will the Slaver lands be…poisoned?”
The King looked at the unfinished painting. “Maybe the gods don’t want us to know. Of all the decisions made by my clan…that one haunts us the most.”
“The Hidden are to blame for that,” Ciolsi said, “not the gods.”
Virid signaled Elsime to stop recording. Elsime pursed her lips, unsure what they were talking about.
“The Hidden don’t exist,” Hawn’ru said. “They’re bedtime tales for naughty children.”
“That’s because no Hidden could pretend to be dumb enough to pass as a Blooded,” Ciolsi said.
“Enough.” The King rolled his eyes. “Our new Quill will go back to her quarters and tell the other maidens how ridiculous we are behind closed doors.”
Elsime shook her head quickly and drew in a breath to deny that, but she couldn’t find the courage to speak to the King.
“Tales or not, we have an issue with the buoys,” Hawn’ru said.
Virid signaled for her to begin transcribing again.
“A meeting with the Islanders?” the King asked Virid. “With one of the dominant, yet agreeable factions?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Virid said, “but I can make no promises. Islanders are just as likely to try to steal from us as they are to negotiate.”
“There is a darkness!” Osuda jumped to his feet and thrust his hands away from him like walls were closing in. “A darkness comes to the mountain.”
King Menicus glanced at Virid. She hurried over to Elsime and hauled the young woman off her stool and into the antechamber where she’d been waiting.
“Wait! My tools, my transcription,” Elsime said, pointing at the door.
“I’ll have them brought to you.” Virid smoothed out her gown. “There are…topics that must never be recorded. You’re new and don’t fully understand this. Damn Osuda and his communion. He went too deep, as usual.”
“Is this about the…Hidden?” Elsime asked.
“No. Something far worse than horror stories for the lower castes. Nothing to concern you, maiden. And if anyone ever enquires about a dark mountain, you feign ignorance and tell me or Ciolsi who did the asking. Fail at that and you’ll be shipped back to your clan in disgrace. And you had better believe Ciolsi will send someone to test you. That one loves his games. Now go back to your quarters and write up the meeting for the archives. Go,” she said, frowning at the priest’s shouting that carried through the door.
“Ugh, I wish we’d never told him about the mountain. But all things happen beneath the gods’ gaze. They would’ve told him eventually.” She rapped at the door and slipped back into the chamber.
Elsime stood there, her jaw half-open. Her mother wanted to know all about her first day being assigned to the King, but now Elsime didn’t know what to say…or if she could say anything at all.
She turned and walked down a narrow hallway, her hands and apron feeling too light without her tools. This was not the glamorous mission she’d given up so many years to training to accomplish. A pallor fell across her face, and she gained some appreciation for the work and responsibility she knew plagued so many adults of her clan.
Chapter 5
Daniel glanced at himself in the mirror before turning the bathroom light off. He’d gone to sleep with his synth layer on and was used to seeing himself as a Tyr. Wo
uld he be shocked to see normal humans again? Did a part of him think they’d see the Tyr face he’d worn for so long?
There was a thump in the floor.
“House, what was that?”
“Mr. Hower is in the garage and has been there for the past fourteen minutes.”
Daniel glanced at a clock on the wall then looked out a window to a deep-red sky—what passed for nighttime on Tyr.
Another thump.
Daniel grumbled and went downstairs, the floor squeaking with each step of slippered feet. He opened the door to a garage where weak overhead lights illuminated a sedan with the trunk open. Suitcases were in a pile on the concrete floor and a man was bent into the back.
“Blast this damn Dalmatian contraption!” the man shouted, and a tool flew out the back and hit a closet door.
“Aaron?” Daniel asked.
Hower’s head bumped against the car as he backed out. Hower wasn’t wearing his synth, but he didn’t react to Daniel in his Tyr guise. Hower rubbed the top of his head, sending loose strands of grey up to fold over his ample bald spot.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Help me pack.” Hower waved his hand at the luggage.
“I had it packed just fine when we went to bed.” Daniel went to a new suitcase and tested the weight.
“But then I realized I could get another fifteen tissue samples within my mass allowance if I digitized the mineral deposits from early on in our assignment.” Hower picked up a small suitcase and shoved it into the trunk. “How did you get all these blasted things to fit? Did House transport in three more when I wasn’t looking?”
“That technology doesn’t exist,” House said through a speaker in the overhead lights.
“Rhetorical, you stack of digital effluence.” Hower picked up another suitcase, but Daniel took it from him.
“Julia collected those mineral samples,” Daniel said.
