The Awakeners - Northshore & Southshore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Gendra Mitiar was told about the approaching Talker by a servant sent by Shavian.

  "His Grace says to come to the small council room as soon as you can." The servant bowed.

  Thin and dried, a woman of great age, her face long since settled into a vertical assemblage like eroded gully walls, her skin the same dun color as the winter fields, Gendra Mitiar stared at the messenger. When she spoke, it was to reveal vast yellow teeth jutting like monuments from her pale gums; flat, inexorable teeth that ground together from time to time, making the sound of millstones. Her voice was like herself, colorless and strong, betraying an unostentatious but terrible will.

  "Tell His Grace I will be with him shortly," she said.

  "And may Potipur help us," she added to herself, grinning in vicious humor. "For it is certain old Obol won't."

  Shavian Bossit was irritated beyond measure. "I can understand your annoyance at being... ah... flown here against your will, Uplifted One. I can appreciate the discomfort of having a whip lashed about your throat in midair and being threatened with strangulation. However, I can also understand the panic felt by our Superior of Baris. Your action was in defiance of the treaty. You admit as much."

  He tapped his fingers impatiently, glaring at the Talker standing against the wall. The damn flier would not take tea, would not act like a rational creature, would not sit, though they could and often did. Shavian hated looking up at people, much less fliers, though his diminutive size let him do little else. He ran his fingers through jet-black hair, dyed each ten-day by his mute body servant, and frowned in exasperation. Where in the hell was Gendra!

  "I have explained already," the Talker croaked from a throat not only unaccustomed to human talk but largely unfitted for it by the recent and lengthy half choking he had experienced at Ilze's hands. The flight had taken some days, and the whip had been around his throat for most of that time. "The treaty does not apply in this instance."

  "You have said so." Shavian kept his voice carefully without emotion. "You have not said why."

  "I am not required to do so. I demand you accept my word that such is the case."

  Shavian pondered the possibility of simply sending this creature away. He would never have thought of insulting a Talker, any Talker, when he was younger and the promise of life offered by the Payment had seemed irresistible. Now he toyed with the idea. It was sad to think the wisdom and resolution of age might be only weariness and pain. Effort avoided became pain avoided, and ennui masqueraded as good sense. So he told himself, not speaking any of it aloud. When he spoke again, with every appearance of courtesy, it was to remark in an uninterested voice, "The treaty does not permit you to demand anything of the kind. I will listen to reasonable talk, flier. I will not listen to bombast, which is what you have given me thus far." To call a Talker "flier" was no less an insult than to turn one's back, which Shavian also contemplated doing.

  The Talker's beak flushed red, a deep, winey color betokening fury. Shavian regarded this without apology or change of expression. The damn thing had very nearly forced his way into the Protector's bedroom. Potipur knows what old Obol would have made of that! Or what the Jondarites would have done! Killed the Talker, probably. Then they would have had to kill the others to keep the word from getting back to the Talons. Which might not have worked, for other Talkers or mere fliers might have seen these during their long flight toward the Chancery.

  Well, it had been a disaster narrowly averted. Shavian had called on a hand of Jondarites to bring the Talker here, to the small council room. So far as the Lord Maintainer was concerned, Talker of the Sixth Degree Sliffisunda of the Talons had received as much courtesy as was due him.

  This thought, or some similar sentiment, must have occurred to the angry Talker as well, for in a few moments the furious color faded. When the flier spoke again it was with grudging courtesy.

  "We believe these two may be implicated in the Riverman heresy."

  "Indeed? I find that hard to credit. In any case, this suspicion should have been reported at once to the Propagator of the Faith, and he would have sent for them to accuse and ascertain the truth."

  "We did not wish you to send for them. We wanted to question them at the Talons." The words were clear enough, though it was hard to tell what the intonation was meant to convey.

  "So you have said. Still, you have not said why."

  "I will not say." Sliffisunda's beak flushed again, only slightly this time.

  Oh, these Talkers didn't like subordination. High mucky-mucks, all of them, and proud! By Potipur, they're proud. A servant came forward with tea. Shavian took a cup, offering none to the flier. It had refused before; let the refusal stand. When the silence was broken by a rap on the door, he called, "Enter," knowing already who was there. The woman and the man who came in wore faces as carefully blank as his own; their bows toward Sliffisunda were sketchy, a bare politeness. The Talker stood against the wall, unmoving, looking them over with unblinking eyes.

  "Uplifted One, these are staff members of the Chancery. At the most recent convocation you met the Dame Marshal of the Towers, Gendra Mitiar. The gentleman with the large knife is Bormas Tyle, Deputy Enforcer to Lord Don. Put the knife away, Bormas. The Talker is not threatening us. Yet."

  He beckoned them to the table, offering cups only to them, interrupted in this calculated insult by another tap at the door and the entry of someone he had not sent for.

  "Lord Maintainer," said Tharius Don with an ironic bow. "I saw my Deputy Enforcer waiting upon you and came to inquire if I might be of assistance."

  Shavian Bossit poured another cup, seething inside. He had not wanted Tharius Don this morning. Lately he had not wanted Tharius Don at all. The man had a chilling way with him. Like the knife cut of cold conscience. "The Lord Propagator of the Faith, Tharius Don," he said, making introductions. "The Uplifted One, Talker of Sixth Degree Sliffisunda of the Talons. I have apologized to the Uplifted One for the absence of other members of the council." Of the seven, four were present. A quorum, he thought. Though he would have traded Tharius Don's presence in a moment for that of the Ambassador to the Thraish, Ezasper Jorn.

  He turned back to the table, making a wry mouth at the Dame Marshal and commenting, sotto voce, "Ezasper Jorn should be conducting this little exercise as Ambassador to the Thraish, but both he and Koma Nepor are off somewhere. The Protector, of course, would be of no help." He shrugged, taking more tea for himself. "I know I am discourteous. This Uplifted One has set my teeth on edge."

  "I assume you have reason for discourtesy?" She turned toward the Talker, millstone jaws loud in the quiet room. Only the Talker heard it. The others were too long accustomed to the sound to be aware of it.

  "Indeed," Shavian murmured, loud enough for the other humans to hear. "This Talker and two of his subordinates, also Talkers, went to the Tower at Baris and abducted the Superior and one of her senior Awakeners. They went with him under threat of great harm to all those within the Tower. His reason for doing so is that he believes them to be part of the Rivermen heresy."

  "He need not have troubled," said Tharius Don, his gray brows pulling together over black, suddenly angry eyes, in a face become as suddenly and unnaturally pale. The pallor had struck him at the mention of the Superior of Baris, and it did not leave him now. The bones of his striking face stood out in relief as he sucked in his cheeks, biting back a set of too revealing words to replace them with, "We would have fetched them here had he but sent word."

  "Ah, but it was not his intention to fetch them here at all. He sought to take them to the Talons."

  "The Talons! Human prisoners?" Bormas Tyle slid the knife in and out of its sheath, cutting his words as he cut his hair, short and soft as velvet. The hair grew upon his forehead and down his neck onto the bulging muscles of shoulder and back, joining the velvet beard that half hid his mouth, making his head appear upholstered except for his cold serpent's eyes. "By what right? The treaty forbids this."

  "Indeed
." Shavian smiled his three-cornered smile at them all and then at the Talker once more. "So I have said. To which the Talker replies that the treaty does not apply in this case, though he will not say why."

  There was a silence that began as mere hesitation, becoming tumescent with something more ominous than that, a brooding expectancy broken only by the hiss of the Deputy Enforcer's knife and the grinding of the Dame Marshal's teeth. These hostile sounds pervaded the room, sliding in it like serpents.

  The silence was broken by Tharius Don. Such tension could breed nothing good, and in the absence of the Ambassador to the Thraish, someone had to take the responsibility of ending it. He moved with practiced ease, crossing the room and bowing the Talker to precede him into the corridor. "I am sure the Uplifted One would like to sit down. Perhaps he would honor us by joining his subordinates and having a cup of tea. I will prepare for him below, and we will beg his return when we have finished our discussion."

  The Lord Maintainer sighed. For a moment there, he had felt something almost wonderful within, like lust, or youth, or rage. The possibility of hot conflict, maybe some blood spilled? His hands trembled. Whose blood? Most likely his own. "By all means, Tharius." He sighed. "By all means. Uplifted One? Will you go with the Lord Propagator? We will meet again a little later, when we have considered this matter."

  It was quiet in the room after Tharius left. Gendra Mitiar cast questioning glances at Shavian Bossit from time to time, which he affected not to see. Gendra Mitiar had been uncollegial latterly. No, not only latterly, but for some time. Irascible. Given to ineffectual quarrels about trifles. She would not be content until her enmity for Tharius was out in the open, where she could gnaw on it publicly, something Bossit wasn't sure he wanted to see. At least, not yet. He sighed, and then sighed again, drifting toward the window, his inconspicuous form gliding like a shadow.

  Suppose Lees Obol dies. Shavian considered this, not for the first time. Suppose Lees Obol dies of ostentatiously natural causes, and suppose, therefore, that General Jondrigar does not turn Highstone Lees into an abattoir seeking the cause of Obol's death. Suppose this not totally unlikely state of affairs. Who would be the next Protector?

  Gendra is in line, but she is not popular among the members of the Chancery council who will elect the next Protector. There are factions there. The Mendicants have a faction for themselves. Meaning what? Potipur knows. Shavian has his own supporters, of course. And Ezasper Jorn would be supported by the Thraish, who have their own way of bringing influence to bear. Research Chief Koma Nepor has been in Jorn's pocket since Jorn got him his first dose of elixir, so those two council members could be said to make up a faction. And there is a faction for Tharius Don among the lower ranks of the Towers. Perhaps a stronger one than is generally known. Which would explain Gendra's antagonism toward him, if an explanation were needed.

  Shavian ticked the connection into memory. He did not doubt Bormas Tyle had also a claque, ready to come forward. Bormas Tyle, however, could be managed, though he sometimes needed simple reasons to do what more complex motivations required, able to accept the former but being only confused by the latter.

  So, of the six surviving council members, there would be at least four contenders. Only Jondrigar and Nepor would not seek the office of Protector for themselves. Four would, including Shavian himself. Enough, he thought, to make rampant confusion.

  The door opened, closing behind Tharius Don with a final snick, like a scissors.

  "Guarded?" Bormas Tyle asked, his knife sliding with creepy persistence in the sheath. "You have them well guarded?"

  "Relax, Deputy. I've put them in the reception room at the end of the corridor over the garden, the one with barred windows. You'll recall there's a grilled gate at the end of the corridor, and I've stationed six Jondarites there, all growling at the insult almost offered to Lees Obol. Sufficient?"

  "The damn things fly, is all," snarled Bormas. "You have to remember they fly."

  "As we do remember," Shavian commented. "Well, you've all heard everything I've heard. If you'd care to offer advice." As when haven't you? He asked himself. All of you. Endlessly.

  "How did the captives end up here?" Gendra, shaking her head and running one fingertip up and down a long wrinkle on her cheek. She did this sometimes for hours at a time, engraving her fingertip into her face as though to deepen the crevasses already there. Up, down, up, down.

  "The senior Awakener - Ilze, his name is - brought a couple of whips with him, wrapped around his body under his clothes. Once in the air, he snapped them around two of the fliers' necks - evidently he has had considerable practice with the whips - and Lady Kesseret told the Talkers they had the choice of flying to the Chancery or of being strangled to death. Luckily, she knew the way up the Split River Pass, or they'd have died on the heights. Damn fliers can't get high enough to come over the Teeth. We may regret they came through." Bossit already regretted it, but it was not time to talk of that.

  "And where is the lady Kesseret now?" asked Tharius in a carefully neutral voice. "And the Awakener?"

  "I've got them both in the Accusers' House. It seemed prudent."

  "Prudent!" He covered his terror with a pretended scorn. Kessie! In the Accusers' House!

  "Until we know a bit more."

  "Such as why they are suspected?"

  "Among other things, yes," sighed the Maintainer. "I was much tempted to send this Talker packing. Something told me it would be a mistake to do it or not do it, either way." Shavian pondered this. Prudence had come with age and was as tasteless in his mouth as food had become. Lacking the spice of feeling.

  "And the Talker won't say why the treaty does not apply."

  "I think we can figure it out," Shavian murmured, moving across the room to the tea service, taking a cup with him to a comfortable chair, where he sat, face wreathed in fragrant steam, making owl eyes at them through the mists. "At the recent convocation with the Talkers, we learned they are barely reasonable upon the subject of the Rivermen heresy."

  "That's true," said Tharius Don carefully. "It was all they wanted to talk about. We traveled a great, uncomfortable distance to cross the pass to the place of meeting. There were matters of true import to discuss. This demand of theirs for a higher food quota in order to increase their numbers, for example. Gods, but that needed talking of. But no! All they wanted to do was huddle in dusty groups, ruffling their feathers - full of dander as they are to make me sneeze endlessly - and fulminate about the heresy." He fished a handkerchief out of his sleeve and erupted into it with a great play of gloomy recollection. Let them think him a fool. It was safer than the truth. Besides, the kerchief helped to hide his face.

  "True." Gendra considered this. "It was the same with all of them. They spoke of nothing else, always watching out of the corners of their eyes, as though to catch us in some cover-up. The Rivermen heresy, and was it connected to the homosexuals or the celibates? As though they had anything in common!"

  "And we?" Shavian smiled a tiny, three-cornered smile, a mouse smile, wicked on that small face. "What did we do?"

  "I told them it was all nonsense," said Tharius. "No more to it than the usual few Awakeners who can't get past their junior vows and a coven or two of recalcitrants who put their dead in the River out of misplaced sentimentalism. I told them in my opinion it was not a widespread heresy, and not a conspiracy of any magnitude. Probably not more than a dozen or two Rivermen per town, mostly individual families. I doubt there's a Riverman anywhere in the towns who even knows that Talkers exist, so it would be hard to imagine a conspiracy against them. And I told them the boy lovers were only aberrants! Genetic, if anything. Not a matter of politics or belief at all. And the same with the celibates. They want to believe all humans think of nothing but endless breeding, and it's hard to disabuse them of the notion. Though the gods know, Talkers ought to understand that if any creature can. They don't breed. They can't."

  "And I told them the same thing," sneered Gendra, as tho
ugh having agreed with him for any reason was of questionable taste.

  Bossit bowed. "Your Graces were no doubt right to do so. However, if I were one given to paranoia, deeply suspicious that some human group was plotting my downfall, and if the Propagator of the Faith told me it was all nonsense and then the Dame Marshal of the Towers told me it was all nonsense - both of them telling me this as a mere aside, mind you, not with any appearance of grave consideration - might I not feel even more suspicious? Why would the leader of the humans be so offhand unless he wished to mislead me?"

  "You mean the Talkers thought we were lying? That there is indeed some vast Rivermen plot which we know about?" Tharius kept his voice calm, unmoved, feeling the sweat crawling on his forehead but trusting the shadows of the corner where he sat to hide him.

  Trust Shavian, thought Bormas Tyle, drawing no attention to himself whatsoever. If there is one conspiratorial breath inhaled within ten thousand paces, trust Shavian to hear it and smell upon it what rotten fish the speaker ate for dinner. He sat quiet, watching the others think about this.

  "It would fit," Gendra continued. "It would explain this particular action. They wanted to do some independent questioning." She raked both sides of her face simultaneously, fingers up and down the gullies, up and down. "And, of course, they could claim the treaty wouldn't apply if they really thought we were breaking it.''

  "There's something more here... " Bormas Tyle turned to stare out the window. "Something going on."

  "It may be wise to give them the Awakeners," Gendra said. "A quick way to show them we aren't lying."

  Tharius turned pale, miming another sneeze to hide his pallor and his tight lips. Behind the linen veil he composed himself. "It would show them nothing of the kind. They will find whatever they believe is true. The Talkers are experts at torture. What do you think the lady Kesseret of the Tower at Baris will tell them under torture? That she knows nothing? Perhaps, for a time. At last, however, she will say whatever they most want to hear. 'Yes, there is a conspiracy. Yes, they are heretical. Yes, all the homosexuals and the celibates and the Mendicants are part of it. Yes, I was in on it, and so was my senior Awakener; in fact, so was the whole Tower and the entire Chancery, including the Dame Marshal of the Towers and the Protector himself!' "