by Patty Jansen
A male voice in the crowd yelled, “Out of the way, people, let us through. Out of the way!”
People moved aside and a sled with a big male tiyuk stopped at the bottom of the steps. Next to the nomad driver sat Vayra with his musician father, and a couple of packs wrapped in white material lay on the tray.
Vayra jumped off, unlashed the netting on the sled and rolled one of the packs onto the ground. He jumped after it and undid the fastening. The bundle unfolded itself into one of those white Hedron miners’ tents.
He said, “We have six of these. We have heaters, too.”
Within moments a camp had sprung up around the monument. Vayra and his father set up the tents and turned on the heaters. The eating house’s owner left and came back later with a sled containing huge steaming pots of beans in fish sauce. Another brought tea.
As the night wore on, the actors played scenes from the classic plays that were about the fairness of Mirani law and about the importance of Foundation.
Others came with books and read passages. One man even had a copy of the same version of Foundation Law that lay next to Ellisandra’s bed at home.
Guards hung around in the square, but they seemed uncertain as to what to do.
In the middle of the night, when most people had retreated inside the tents, Jintho, Liran and a couple of others went to half-saw through the hinges of the gates to the council complex. Ellisandra pleaded with him to be careful, but he said one of his fellows was an ex-guard and knew their way of patrolling. Jintho came back not much later.
People in the tents told each other stories, and daydreamed about what they wanted to do or buy when finally the borders again opened. Under much cheering, Ellisandra signed the application to join the council at the next elections.
Some time very early in the morning, there was word that Lihan Ilendar had arrived. He was, according to the rumour, staying in one of the guesthouses. Ellisandra sent a couple of her actors to chase up which one.
Not much later, the tent entrance opened and the young actor returned in the company of a middle-aged man. His height and shape of his face clearly marked him as Endri, but he had cut his hair to shoulder length and wore it tied up in a ponytail, held together with an embroidered ribbon the ends of which hung down both sides of his neck and down his chest. He wore a dark blue robe with a red cloak, fastened with a gold clip. On his chest he wore the medallion that marked him as member of the Trader Guild.
“Lihan Ilendar?”
He nodded. “A pleasure to meet you, lady.” She recognised the overly formal speech from Vayra. Was that a Trader thing or just a peculiarity about Mirani speech from around the time she was born? “You’re Ellisandra Takumar?”
“Yes.”
“I’d thought your brother would be here.”
She gave him a sharp look. “And as a girl I can’t speak for my family? I speak for my father, my younger brother and myself.”
“No, no, but it would be much easier if the family heir supported this action.”
“Well, at this point in time, he doesn’t.”
“I see.” He seemed disappointed.
She went on in a calmer voice, “I’m sorry, we still have some respect as Foundation families.”
“Which other families are here?”
Ellisandra let her shoulders slump. “I’ve contacted all of them, and had hoped that the Andrahar family and the Velisar family would come.”
“But?”
“But I’ve been unable to get any response from either of them.”
“I would have expected the Andrahar family at least to be here. Their departure from Miran was ugly, but they’ve not sold their property, and I can only guess that this is because they’re planning to return at some point, or at least resume their business interests. Velisar stopped caring about Miran a long time ago.”
She nodded. “It’s a sad thing.”
One of the theatre staff came in with tea. Ellisandra took the hot cup and cradled it in her hands. She felt incredibly tired. Contacting the other families had been a good plan, but stupid men with stupid self-interests had thwarted it. Hadn’t Vayra said that Andrahar would be there? Where was Vayra anyway?
She let out a sigh. “We’ll still go into the meeting regardless. There won’t be another time to raise these issues. All of us with the theatre will probably lose our jobs anyway. There is nothing left to lose. If they dismantle Foundation Law, we’re going to have to leave as well, painful as it will be for Father.” She had to keep her voice in check. She didn’t want to leave Miran. She didn’t want to stand by the sidelines while the nation she loved was being dismantled by idiots. She wanted the boycotts gone. She wanted the Traders to come back. She wanted the life to come back to Miran.
“You are very brave, lady.”
“Thank you.” But braveness alone would not make the plan succeed.
25
ONE THING the stories never tell you about rebels is that they have family chores to fulfil. In the stories, the heroine does not have to take time out for feeding her children, or, in Ellisandra’s case, look after her elderly father.
Jintho had said that Darma would look after him, and often they’d had arguments that she should just trust the staff to do a good job. The thing was, she didn’t. Much as she liked Darma, Ellisandra didn’t think she did a good job of looking after Father. That was not Darma’s fault; he made it hard for anyone to do a good job, and the staff members were too timid to tell him to stop being stupid or keep his hands to himself.
So Ellisandra put on her cloak, gloves and scarf.
While they waited for the council building to open, many of the protesters caught some sleep, huddled on the comfortable inflatable mattresses, leaning against each other covered by cloaks. The heater blew warm air across the people. Even in this tent, it was hard to believe that it was freezing cold outside.
She opened the entrance to the air tunnel and slipped out of the heated space. It was already so much colder here, and became colder still when she opened the outer entrance.
An undisturbed carpet of snow greeted her, twinkling in the light from the street lamps like little gemstones. Snow had capped the columns of the monument and the stone slab between them.
There was no sign of guards, although she had no illusion that they watched the group’s every move.
“Where are you going, sis?”
Ellisandra gasped. She hadn’t heard Jintho come up behind her.
“I need to look after Father.”
“I’ll come.”
The two walked across the square in silence.
When they were in the alley between the markets and the council compound, Jintho said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For taking that hit for me. For not telling me how stupid I am.”
“Well, you are stupid, but I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that. Of all the girls in Miran to get pregnant, Asitho Bisumar’s daughter has to take some special idiot award.”
“Thanks for reaffirming that.”
She laughed. “The hide of you.”
“It was Sariandra’s idea.”
“Don’t tell me you planned this.”
“I didn’t. She did.”
“Guess you were a willing participant?”
“It was fun, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Brothers! She rolled her eyes. It was said that all the Bisumar women were strong-willed. Sariandra seemed to be no exception. She clearly had one aim in mind: to get out of her father’s house. Short of running away—and cutting herself off from her inheritance—a family of her own was probably the safest route.
“So that was what the thing with the shop is about: getting your own income.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I hope I can make that happen. I really do. We should talk to Enzo to see if he has changed his mind about supporting us. We would stand a better chance if we have at least two of the official heirs.”
> “Do you think we’ll get much support from Lihan Ilendar?”
“I don’t know. He seems like . . .” She wanted to say a bit of a pompous prick but he had made the effort to come, even if he expected to take part of the credit for it. Or something.
“Nothing yet from the Andrahar family?”
She shook her head. “Vayra said there would be someone here. I don’t know how he knows. He’s friendly with them, so I can gather that he’s asked them. Now I wish I’d talked to them myself.”
“What can we do?”
“Well . . .” She hesitated. “Theatre is all bluff and show. The best we can do is put on a show. Did you go to the library as a kid and see the Foundation stones in the little glass cabinet in that dark room in the tower?”
“I did.”
“Father has the keys to that room.”
Jintho frowned at her.
“If the council considers the Foundation families and the stones worthless, let them state that this is the case, clearly, in the open, while members of the Foundation families are holding the stones.”
“That’s . . . kind of . . . confrontational.”
“I’m sorry. It’s the only thing I can think of doing. The council is good at avoidance. When we’re all standing there demanding that they make a decision, they can’t avoid us. They can talk, or they can send in the guards. It’s up to them, but eventually, they’re going to have to prove which sections of the law allow them to abolish the safeguards.”
“All right,” Jintho said, but he sounded petrified.
They found the house warm, but Enzo wasn’t there. He’d gone out, Riana said. They quickly ate some soup and bread in the kitchen and then went up to Father’s room.
He turned his head to the door when both of them came in. “Ah, at least you’re not leaving your old father sit alone by himself.”
“Did Enzo come in?”
“He wanted to know where you were.”
“When was this?”
“This morning.” That made no sense. It was morning. That would have been yesterday. His perception of time was muddled sometimes and it might have been yesterday. “He was very angry with me about telling him not to marry that girl.”
No, definitely not a good day today.
Ellisandra quickly made Father comfortable and then followed Jintho out of the room. “Where do you think he would have left those keys?” she asked him when they were in the hallway.
“In the library desk?”
Indeed, they found several key bundles in the desk drawer. Ellisandra took all of them.
Getting into the library tower was a lot trickier. The library’s entrance was next to the council building, at the top of the same set of stairs. The library remained open throughout the night so that students could use it before and after class. Because vagrants tended to sneak in and sleep in the building, guards were everywhere: in the foyer, in the halls, on the galleries.
A group of them stood in the courtyard which held the only entrance to the tower. Jintho went to ask them something and Ellisandra managed to quickly slip into the door, and shut it behind her. In the small space of the staircase her breath sounded muffled.
She waited until the voices outside had faded.
Phew.
The staircase went around the tower twice. At the top was a small door. She had to try at least ten keys before she found one that fitted. For a moment she thought the door was rusted shut, but the key turned.
Inside the room the smell of disuse met her. The light from the staircase glinted on glass. The cabinet looked smaller than she remembered it being, and the fabric was a lot more dusty and faded. She tried opening the sides, but there was no door.
Jintho would have said, Try lifting the top.
She did and the glass cover came off, releasing ages of dusty air. She gathered up the four chains. The velvet underneath showed narrow dust-free trails where the chains had lain for many years.
She stuck them in her pocket and went back down the stairs, where she found Jintho still talking with the guards. She slipped into the overhang of a gallery and stood behind a post to listen. He passed himself off as a student of the stars, and had asked the guards for that section of the library.
Brother, you are so full of nonsense, you should have been an actor.
He left the courtyard, thanking the guards profusely, and Ellisandra joined him on the way back towards the square.
They stopped in a little niche where an oil light hung on the wall above a cushioned bench.
“You got them?” Jintho asked.
Ellisandra dug in her pocket and showed him the stones with the silver chains all tangled up.
Each stone was different, but they were all plain water-polished river pebbles. Each had a silver band encircling the widest point. Engraved on the silver were tiny letters.
“The Andrahar stone is missing,” she said.
“It was lost in the fire. I remember how people from the council spent days and days combing over the ruins and digging up the top layer of soil. They never found it. An expert said the river pebble would have exploded in the fire, and the silver would have melted in unrecognisable globs and would have been taken away with the rubbish or the spare stuff for sale.”
She pulled one out. “Look, this one is ours. It even has our name engraved.”
Jintho took the stone from her, undid the clasp on the silver chain and hung it around her neck. “This probably has no more than symbolic value, since these stones were taken from their families.”
But having the stones still felt good.
By the time they made it back to the camp, it was fully light and the group of protesters had left the tents and lined up in front of a small side gate that the guards had opened, just as Ellisandra had predicted. They were processing entrants one by one, and taking their time to do it, too. She had been afraid that they would use this tactic.
Meanwhile, the councillors arrived through another gate and went into the building unhindered. Ellisandra pushed to the front of the queue.
The guards gave her a strange look, as if they’d written off the protesters as “rabble” and weren’t expecting to see someone like her.
“Can you let us in? We’re lawful citizens and we’re entitled to attend the council meeting.”
“We need to do ID checks on everyone in the public gallery.”
“Then call a few more guards, so that we can be inside when the meeting starts.”
“They’re all busy. We didn’t anticipate this many people.”
“Why is this gate closed anyway? It never is.”
“It’s necessary for security.”
“What’s changed since yesterday? As far as I know, we’re still all Mirani citizens and we have a right to be inside.”
A couple of young men next to her started to push the gate. They, of course, didn’t know that the hinges had been sawn through and were hanging by the merest thread.
Then Ellisandra spotted a familiar face on the other side of the fence. “Enzo!”
He stopped, searching the crowd and found her. His expression turned uneasy. Raedon Tussamar and Jaeron stood on either side of him, about to go into the building as councillors. Jaeron’s eyes met hers with such contempt that a chill touched her. He would never forgive her. She had probably made a mistake in handing that letter to Tolaki rather than him. To get the bad news through his sister would have added even more embarrassment.
Enzo strode to the gate. “Elli, what are you doing here? You’re making a spectacle of yourself. Why haven’t you been home all night? I worried about you after that horrendous mauling of that beautiful play.”
“Mauling? Didn’t you hear the cheers. Tell me that the people didn’t like it.”
“Nemedor Satarin is furious.”
“Anyone else? Asitho Bisumar maybe? Did you notice that most people in that hall stood on their seats cheering for us? Most people in that hall called for elections. Most people in that hal
l have had enough of being isolated as a nation, and kept ignorant as citizens. Join us. Make a stand with us. I know you’re a good man, because I’ve seen your good side. This is not it. Open the gate.”
“It’s for your own protection. The High Council will order you killed before conceding.”
“Let them try.”
“You can’t stop them.”
“Maybe we’ll have trouble stopping them, since we’re only artists and women, but you can stop them legally. You, and Lihan Ilendar. He’s with us.”
He said nothing.
“Come on, let’s go,” Raedon said.
Enzo gave her one last look, worried more than angry, and turned around.
“Enzo, you know it’s the right thing to do. Father would have wanted it this way.”
“Oh, shut up, woman!” Raedon called.
Ellisandra would not be silenced. “I won’t shut up until I know what you’re using to bribe my brother. By law, he’s the only one who can still block the law changes. You know it’s wrong, Enzo! Do the right thing. Help me, help your brother.”
Enzo said nothing and joined his colleagues. The three of them disappeared into the building.
Ellisandra turned her attention back to the guards. “Let me through. It’s our right to attend the meetings.”
“Be patient, please, we’re required to check everyone’s ID. Stand in line! Move back from the gate.”
A man shouted, “We’re legal Mirani citizens. There is no need for this nonsense.” He kicked the gate, and several of the others, also actors, grabbed the bars and pushed. That was the last bit of force the hinges needed to fall apart.
The big metalwork frame toppled inward—both guards just managed to scramble out of the way—and fell onto the ground with a big clang that echoed over the square.
The protesters cheered and surged into the courtyard. In the crush, someone took Ellisandra’s hand and led her through at the front of the crowd. It was Keldon.
They went up the steps into the foyer, where they were met by the next group of guards standing defensively in a line. These ones all carried their crossbows across their backs.
