Stavros looked at Liphar with a new respect for this willingness to balance priestly convictions with a sensitive nose for pragmatic considerations, despite the anxiety it caused him to do so. Stavros knew his next question would cause him even more, but knew he would ask it anyway. Thus he absorbed one more lesson in his crash course in political maneuvering: one can always rationalize using one’s friends for the sake of the Cause.
“Will you talk to Aguidran with me?”
But Liphar had foreseen the request and had already decided. He nodded miserably. To prove that the risk did not go unnoticed, Stavros asked, “What would Ashimmel do if she found out you were speaking against her word?”
Liphar shrugged. “Very mad, she.” But he would not elaborate, and Stavros decided there were limits to the discomfort he was willing to impose. He squeezed the young man’s shoulder and wished he were not doing it so often out of guilt. “Then let’s get it over with,” he said gently.
They slipped out of Keth-Toph. Liphar did not want to use the exterior route to the RangerHall for fear of running into a weather-watching priest on the stairs or in the cave mouths. They took the corridor inward instead and cut through a busy domestic sector to reach the wide inner tunnel that connected all the third-level entries along the back of the guildhalls. The narrow streets of the living quarters were crowded with the two-carts that had not been winched to ground for the planting. Families had turned their caves inside out, deciding what to pack and what to leave behind. Some carts stood already packed, among piles of household goods waiting to be carried down to carts below.
Stavros eyed the size of the piles. “Lifa, how long is this trade trip?”
“Go on lighttime, stay trade some darktime, come back darktime-lighttime.”
Stavros calculated, came up with about an earthmonth. “Long time,” he murmured, subdued. Coming out of the living quarters into the main corridor, they approached a group of FoodGuilders engaged in a furious argument about the wisdom of going on with the trade trip. They still wore the aprons they had stained while preparing the Planting Feast. They looked hot and tired and confused by their own impassioned choosing of sides. Liphar hurried by them with averted eyes and whipped gratefully around the next corner into the tunnel that led to the RangerHall.
At the entry to the RangerHall, the Master Healer’s apprentice Dwingen stood chewing a finger and fretting. As they came up, he looked hopeful and asked if they had seen the Master Ranger or knew where she was. When Liphar shrugged, the boy returned his finger to his mouth and then asked if they agreed that the best thing he could do was return right away to Physicians’ and tell his guildmaster that Aguidran was nowhere to be found. Stavros smiled. Clearly this thin child had no patience for standing around corridors wasting time in waiting.
Liphar nodded his assent in a grown-up fashion. The boy grinned his thanks and went speeding off. The older apprentice hesitated at the tall arched entry. Stavros beamed a steady encouragement, then led the way.
“Come on,” he said. “We might as well wait for her inside.”
“Stav! Stav!”
Startled, he turned. Liphar ducked inside the archway. Megan hurried toward them from the cave mouth.
“You’d better come down,” she called, not waiting until she reached them, “before Emil and Aguidran tear each other limb from limb.”
Danforth woke with the abruptness of one freeing himself from a long drifting sleep. His eyes and head hurt. His hearing felt preternaturally sharp. The incessant hellish drumming of the rain on the hull of the broken Sled had ceased. He had a sensation of comforting hands resting on his forehead, warm and loving, as his mother’s hands used to feel. He could not move his head but willed his eyes to focus. Amber sunlight hung in the air above him, exciting the little dust motes into their frenetic dance. He watched them for a while, forgetting about the hands, and wondered if his arm would be there if he tried to raise it.
Can’t move.
He tried to call out, but his voice still slept. His jaw worked. He was a fish gasping for air. He could express only an inarticulate gargle. He became aware of the hands again, soothing, calming his panic.
Relax, T.D. It’ll come. He told himself he’d had worse dreams than this. Gazing beyond the motes in their shaft of sunlight, he saw a huge wooden wheel suspended in shadow. Glints of sun reflected off glass and glazed ceramic. Beyond that was stone vaulting and darkness.
Where the hell am I?
He swallowed. His throat awoke to the relief from dryness.
“Hello?” he croaked. He was rewarded by an answering rustle. The hands withdrew their gentle pressure from his brow. He was not sure until they were gone whether he had imagined them and the comfort they brought.
“Wait!” he protested hoarsely. He had discovered his arms and they were enveloped in tubes and bandages.
“You wake, TaylorDanforth,” said a quiet voice.
A man appeared from behind his head to crouch beside his bed and press cool fingers to his wrist. Against the pale beige of his collarless smock, the man’s skin was dark, Danforth thought nearly as dark as his own. His long ringleted brown hair was gathered into a tie at the back of his neck. He stood, gingerly moved the rolling IV stand out of Danforth’s line of sight. He looked tall and thin leaning over the bed.
“Who’re you?” mumbled Danforth. His sudden wakefulness was slipping away from him. Water through a sieve, he thought, drifting.
The brown man smiled as he crouched again at Danforth’s side. “I am Ghirra Ogo Dul. I am a doctor.”
Danforth closed his eyes in relief. “And I was sure I was gonna die out there. Christ!” He opened his eyes again and turned his head with effort to study the man more closely. “Don’t know you, do I? Did they send in a rescue crew from the Orbiter somehow?”
The brown man considered for a moment. “No,” he replied finally.
Danforth tried to place the man’s odd accent. “You from one of the other ships?” Even this impossibility seemed minor compared to the miracle of being alive. For a moment he was lost to a memory of pain and despair in endless cold and hammering rain, and then the man was talking to him, bringing him back from his drift.
“Do you know what this is, TaylorDanforth?”
Danforth squinted dutifully, fighting the drift. He made out a handful of lavender sparkle.
“Pretty rock,” he murmured. “Pretty.”
“Do you know what it is?” the man repeated, but now Danforth saw other white smocks hovering at the periphery of his vision. His drifting stopped abruptly.
Oh shit. A goddamn hospital!
“Am I offworld?” he demanded in a waking panic. “Did they send me home?”
Please god, they can’t have sent me home!
The man restrained him gently as he struggled to sit. “No, you must rest still, TaylorDanforth.” He beckoned one of the white smocks to him, a woman with brown skin like his own. He murmured briefly and sent her away. Danforth picked out familiar syllables.
“Susannah? Is she here? Am I still on Fiix?”
“Phiix, yes, you are,” the man soothed.
Danforth felt the hands again as the man returned to the head of his bed. The hands did not move, merely rested lightly on his skin, radiating comfort. “Then who are you?” he repeated thickly, closing his eyes again against the confusion.
“I am a doctor,” the man replied, and Danforth slept.
Megan stayed in the cave mouth to observe from a distance. Stavros slipped down the long stone stair, squint-eyed in the sunlight. He took advantage of the cover of a detail of apprentices loaded down with bales of cloth stamped with the red interlaced sign of the WeaverGuild. The rough outer wrappings creaked and smelled of musty straw. He dipped into their shadow and glanced back up the steps, hoping for a glimpse of Liphar, lost in the bustle behind. The young man had stopped to share the load of an elderly rugmaker who had taken on more than any single soul could dream of managing on the steep stair. Stavros c
ould not find either of them in the confusion of goods and people inching down the stairs.
Above, the cave mouths yawned darkly against the amber cliff. The winches were again in use, throwing moving shadows on the pale rock. The PriestGuild had watchers stationed at half a dozen entries, their attention fixed on the skies while an earthyear’s worth of hard work in the craft halls moved past them toward the cliff bottom. Stavros did not see Ashimmel among them and was obscurely relieved.
Maybe it’s not so serious yet, he decided.
Two ascending shadows passed. All five of the cliff-top winches had been pressed into service to speed the loading. Descending crates of pottery and glass slid past emptied pallets rising to be refilled.
Aguidran will have her way by default, thought Stavros. Not even Ashimmel could halt this momentum now it’s begun.
Progress down the stairs was slow. The Weaver apprentices struggled with their bales. Stavros peered around them down into the seethe of activity at the cliff bottom. The tent city had been dismantled, packed and returned to storage. The rock flat was crammed with a motley assembly of half-loaded wagons, all sizes and shapes, from single-family two-carts to the twenty giant red-and-blue FoodGuild wagons. Off the far edge of the flat, the hjalk milled in the sun, waiting, their fleshy hooves buried deep in the cooling mud. The flooded fields and terraces gleamed like a vast shattered mirror. FoodGuilders bent solicitously among the yellow stalks. The water was merely ankle-deep now and the tallest crops were uncurling broad fleshy leaves.
With little effort, Stavros picked out the dapper figure of the prospector, face to face with the Master Ranger, she leaning against a tall-sided wagon, her arms negligently folded across her leather-clad chest, he doing the talking, with his bullet head set at its most amiable angle. McPherson hovered uncertainly in between.
Stavros yawned convulsively, wishing he had downed another caffeine jolt before walking into his first real skirmish. Doubt assailed him. His role had been only hastily rehearsed with Liphar and Megan. Would the prospector suspect? Seeing Clausen and the Ranger subtly arrayed for conflict brought home to him how suddenly the battle lines were being drawn, almost without the awareness of the participants. It was crucial to keep the struggle sub rosa as long as possible. He hoped the first Clausen would know of it was when he finally was able to stake his claim, only to find a legal action had already been filed. The scene to come must be played with calm and confidence.
As cold-bloodedly as Clausen would in my place.
Stavros consoled himself with the reminder that he had been playing roles all his life, though perhaps not as consciously. It was only the new degree of self-control required that should concern him.
The congestion eased as four Basketmakers who had taken their time on the stairs made it to the bottom, balancing tall wobbling stacks of their most intricately woven wares. The flow carried Stavros along more quickly than he’d hoped. From his concealment behind the bobbing cloth bales, he saw Aguidran shrug and glance significantly at the sky. Clausen’s answering gesture to McPherson was rueful but just abrupt enough to reveal impatience. They both looked brushed and refreshed, the pilot in clean whites warmed to pale gold by the sun, Clausen in neatly pressed tans, leaning on his rough crutch as if it were a gentleman’s walking stick.
Stavros hit the bottom step and sidled through the crowd. Nearing, he heard: “So where is our Ship’s Linguist when I need him?”
“Right here, Emil.” On cue. Stavros took a deep breath and moved away from the line of weavers into the open.
The prospector swiveled gracefully. His sunburn was already deepening to a healthy tan. His new beard had been carefully trimmed to the same brusque length as his sandy hair. One raised brow took in without further comment Stavros’s bare feet, blousy linen pants and long ropy vest tied across a naked chest.
“Stavros, my boy! Didn’t see you at my triumphal homecoming. Feared you’d been washed away with the flood!”
You wish, Clausen. “Sorry, Emil. Been real busy, with all this going on, the Planting, the packing.” He noted Aguidran’s baleful look and hoped he could manage to affect innocence. Liphar’s fist nudging the small of his back fortified him. He nodded in response, then said to the prospector, “You having a problem here?”
Clausen smiled. “Well, this gentlelady and I seem to be having some trouble making ourselves understood,” he replied smoothly.
“She’s being weird,” complained McPherson. “Usually she gets me just fine.”
Stavros kept his smirk under wraps. Aguidran could forget that she spoke Sawlish if it suited her purpose. He suspected that Clausen had resorted to this oily charm only after failing in his assumption that the Ranger could be ramrodded. That being roughly equivalent to charging full tilt into a force field, Stavros wished he’d sneaked up earlier to witness the collision.
Even the old charm looks a little burned around the edges. Is it possible, Clausen, that you’ve met your match?
“What is it you want her to understand?” he asked earnestly, thinking, Oh, Christ, Clausen’ll never buy this act from me! Liphar had gone over to chat with Aguidran. His part in the plan was to convince her to play along until they had a chance to properly explain themselves to her.
“It’s very simple, really,” Clausen replied. “I need as many of her men as it takes to haul that Sled in here for repairs.”
The prospector’s presumptuousness was outrageous, but Stavros kept his nod carefully neutral. “I’ll see what I can do, Emil.”
He approached Aguidran with elaborate courtesy, using the most rapid Sawlish he could muster. It would not hurt his pose as the crucial go-between to appear more fluent than he really was. Meanwhile, he was learning something else, as he felt himself ease into the role with more confidence than he’d expected: the accompanying power rush was considerable, now that he actually had the prospector at a disadvantage. It was more than the heady weight of responsibility, which he had felt and nearly bungled during the evacuation of the Lander. It was about control, of people and situations.
I’ve had enough trouble just controlling myself in the past…
Aguidran’s eyes slitted in response to his obsequious formality. They met Liphar’s briefly, then returned to his. Her reply was terse and equally rapid.
Stavros breathed a private sigh of relief’ and turned back to Clausen. “Doesn’t look good for now, Emil. She says she’s already been put way behind schedule by going out after you and Taylor. She has to get the trade caravan on the road as soon as possible in order to reach Ogo Dul by darkfall.” He dropped his voice and tried a comradely tone. “This is a major undertaking for her, you understand, packing up the entire population and all the market goods, plus supervising the provisioning.” He hoped the overworked old Master of the FoodGuild wouldn’t hear that last untruth. “She just can’t spare anyone right now.”
Clausen’s expression remained patient. “The entire population. All right, I’ll bite. What or where is Ogo Dul?”
Stavros consulted Aguidran briefly. Then, attempting to sound unamazed by information that was still very recent news to him as well, he replied, “A city on DulValla, the great ocean to the north. She says it’s ten throws—that’s a local unit of both time and distance, equivalent, as far as I can gather, to about twenty kilometers of travel in a thirty-hour cycle. So, about two hundred kilometers away, somewhat less than thirteen of our days’ travel.”
Clausen nodded tightly. “One way.”
“You mean there’s cities out there?” broke in McPherson.
“A number of them.” Stavros used the tone of brotherly reproof he could not direct at Clausen. “On a world this big, it would be unusual if this tiny settlement were the only population.”
“Well, I didn’t mean…” McPherson began, then shrugged and fell silent.
“This is interesting news,” said the prospector. “I would have expected actual cities to have shown up in my remote sensing data.”
“Th
ey’re probably not cities as we think of cities,” Stavros temporized. He gestured up at the cave openings. “Would DulElesi have shown up as a settlement? Particularly under thirty feet of snow?”
Clausen pursed his lips. “And what is the population of this Ogo Dul?”
When questioned, Aguidran shook her head unhelpfully. Liphar piped up with a suggestion that sounded like a guess.
“They don’t keep close track of such things,” Stavros replied, his mind’s eye filling with the volumes of extensively detailed records that swelled the library of each and every guildhall. But this is just the beginning of the lie, he thought. “Liphar says that the tunnels of Ogo Dul spread through many miles of the coastal cliffs. His population guess is several hundred thousand at least.”
“How many other such… settlements are there?” asked Clausen casually.
Stavros let this require more extensive consultation. Clausen did not fidget as he waited, leaning on his stick. McPherson scuffed the mud-caked layered rock with the white toe of a clean boot. The answer Aguidran gave him surprised him. He would only have to stretch the truth to make it sufficiently impressive.
“In the most livable zone, the equatorial regions, she says there’s a settlement every ten throws in any direction. Widely but evenly scattered, it would seem. She reports word of hardy pockets of population to the north and south, but cannot vouch for them herself.” Stavros pictured the world map in the cabinet of the RangerHall and wondered if Aguidran was telling him the truth. Certainly somebody had had access to very detailed information that included the northern and southern regions, in order to draw so complete a map.
Clausen continued his relaxed interrogation. “And again, the reason for the trip?”
“To trade in Ogo Dul.”
“And this requires the entire population? Not very efficient.”
Stavros shrugged helplessly. “That’s the way they’ve always done it.”
“Of course. We wouldn’t want to upset tradition.” Clausen stroked his beard with a cupped palm. “Well. Perhaps we could arrange something for when she’s done organizing this… caravan.”
The Wave and the Flame Page 29
