by Weber, David
They’d reached Portalis Station.
Journey’s end. She fumbled for Jathmar’s hand and clutched it tightly. Physical contact improved her ability to read his emotions, and she could tell he wanted to put himself between her and any danger. Her hand trembled in his, and he turned and rested his brow against hers, trying desperately to restore the easy exchange they’d enjoyed since the day of their marriage, if only for just a moment or two. She could feel the love flowing from him, the fear for their future, the determination to protect her at all cost.
She lifted her face to look into his eyes and pressed a single, soft kiss to his lips, sending back all the love and reassurance she could. He even managed to smile. Then the slider sighed to a halt and a light blinked at the door leading to the station platform, letting passengers know the vehicle had settled to the same level as the platform. Jasak rose and extended a hand to Gadrial. She took it as she came gracefully to her feet and collected her equipment bag—that never went anywhere without her, although the arrival of Hundred Forhaylin and his men had at least given them plenty of other hands to carry their suitcases!
Jathmar pulled down a deep, deep breath, then he, too, rose and assisted Shaylar from her seat. Beyond the windows, the platform was a sea of people, all streaming from the dozens of other sliders, all greeting other people who waited on the platform. Shaylar could see happy reunions, almost hear the glad voices and laughter as families and friends were reunited, despite the sealed window.
Her chin quivered just once.
Then she followed silently as Jasak led the way out of the slider.
* * *
Sir Thankhar Olderhan met the travelers not as the Duke of Garth Showma, Governor of New Arcana, or any of the rest of his titles but as a father. He waved a barely recognizable crab-handed reply to the salutes hurriedly offered by Trooper Sendahli and Chief Sword Threbuch and wrapped his boy Jasak in a big bear hug. Jasak had outgrown his father by a good three inches sometime in his early teens, but the older man still managed to project power and strength.
Thankhar hadn’t thought about those intangibles in years, but if asked, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the reporter across the street using image capture spellware managed to capture clear beautifully framed shots of familial bliss. It also would not have surprised him to learn that later the editor would throw the recording crystal at the reporter’s head and send the young woman back out to get an image that could actually be used with the story headline: OLDERHAN HEIR RETURNS IN DISGRACE!
Instead he released his son from the hug and warmly greeted Gadrial, Shaylar, and Jathmar. The last two were family now, even if the Sharonans hadn’t quite internalized just how much Jasak had meant that when he explained the shardonai term to them. As for Gadrial…well, he’d read his son’s messages, and he had every hope she might be family one day too. He ushered them all into a palatial motic not so very much smaller than the slider they’d just left.
His staff coordinated with Forhaylin, Threbuch, and Sendahli to fill other vehicles, manage the luggage, and convey the rest of their gear the remainder of the way home.
* * *
Lady Sathmin Olderhan would have loved to have been waiting at the slider station for her oldest child’s return. But before the scheduled arrival, there’d been a spate of tiny disasters uniquely suited to the duchess’ touch. So she’d stayed behind expecting to follow after her husband in a second motic and still reach the station well before their son’s slider arrived.
She was still home when the master of the sword in crimson full dress uniform knocked at the private entry to the ducal apartments, however, and she stayed home to keep the Master there to deliver his summons privately. She only stepped out into public view when the staff told her the motic was nearly home.
The reporter stationed outside the gate snapped that shot just fine: Sathmin Olderhan, Duchess Garth Showma, outside the ducal apartments looking deeply worried as the motic bearing Jasak and his party crested the rise on its way home. A little fiddling with the lighting to make the expression deeply foreboding and the image was fit to run on page one.
* * *
“Welcome home Jasak!” Sathmin embraced her son in a hug just as fierce as the one he’d received from his father at the station. “It’s been far too long.”
“Thank you, Mother.” He hugged her back, holding her for several breaths, then inhaled deeply and stood back to do the introductions. “Mother, I believe you’ve met Magister Gadrial before. Maybe through your support of the Garth Showma Institute’s veteran scholarship fund? These are Jathmar Nargra and Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr, my shardonai. They’ve had a very long trip and would rather be home, but—”
“Of course I understand.” Sathmin welcomed the group and ushered them all inside where a small army—another small army—of staff was on hand to make off with the luggage and carry it to the private suites assigned to each guest.
A quick word in her husband’s ear was enough to have him vanish into the comfortable office where she’d convinced the master of the sword to wait, then she turned back with a smile to try to calm her guests.
“Jasak’s written me, though not as much as I’d like.” She arched a brow at him, and her son chuckled in response.
It was an old joke between them that she always wanted more letters home though in reality she was usually quite satisfied with the ones he did send. Normally she had more than enough information to put her heart at ease while he and his troops worked on the edges of the explored universes.
“Anyway,” she waved a hand. “I do what every Andaran mother must, and spend hours and hours just pining away imagining horrible things—” She was already halfway into the familiar joke before she suddenly realized it had lost a lot of its usual humor. She paused, then shook herself.
“I imagine that for about a half second,” she said composedly. “And then I remember Chief Sword Threbuch is there and I’m put entirely at ease. How is your family, Otwal? I saw your niece and her new baby just a few weeks ago. I hope everyone’s doing well?”
Otwal ducked his head in acknowledgement. “This was our first stop, Your Grace. I actually haven’t been to see the family yet.”
“Of course.” Sathmin pulled herself up straight. “Don’t let me keep you. I did prepare some places for you here if you’d like to stay with us, but I certainly don’t want to hold you to ceremony when there are people in Portalis you haven’t seen in ages.”
Otwal shook his head. “I wouldn’t mind another night of easy sleep before meeting the newest rug rat. And I’m a bachelor myself, so there’s no particular urgency to see the extended family.”
He didn’t add that reporting to the inquiry board would be easier to do from here than from his brother’s place on the outskirts of Portalis on the Arcana Prime side of the city. The chief sword had seen the duke leave, and she suspected he’d correctly interpreted what it meant when a staff member discreetly called Jasak Olderhan away.
Sathmin didn’t ask after Otwal’s parents since she’d attended both their funerals several years past and, like many of the families with a long history of service in the Andaran Temporal Scouts, their ashes were scattered at the military memorial parade grounds maintained by the duke’s private purse.
The ashes of the troops fallen in this current conflict were due to begin arriving back home soon, and Sathmin expected to be attending all the services. The memorial grounds were a quiet, serene place that until relatively recently had seen only weekly or monthly use as the elder and infirm passed on at great age. She didn’t look forward to their new more frequent use or the changed tone that would come when services for old veterans were replaced by services for young men killed in combat.
They names of the dead and news of their loss had, of course, out paced the arrival of their ashes. And while Sathmin’s routine visits to the bereaved were no less necessary, in some cases they were significantly less welcome when the shock of loss turned to anger. Worse
, sometimes the family chose to blame the Andaran Army—especially in the absence of the official dispatches which might have explained why the young men they’d loved had died—since there were no Sharonians at hand. And through that tenuous contact, the fury made its mad connections to direct itself at Andara’s highest commanders including the Duke of Garth Showma and thus also his wife, Sathmin.
“I understand, Otwal,” she said. “Then you’re welcome to stay with us, and I shall ask Cook to do her very best to tempt you to stay for just as many meals as you can possibly manage.” She turned to Trooper Jugthar Sendahli. “And a very fine welcome to you also Trooper. I’m sorry I’m not acquainted with your family, but the same offer applies to you. We can speed you or your way or host you with us in whatever way makes you feel most comfortable.”
Trooper Sendahli executed a deep bow that caused Gadrial’s brow to furrow. Sathmin recognized it, too, as the greeting of a lowest garthan to a high caste multhari shakira.
“Oh please my friend, none of that! I’m an Andaran woman. If you start treating me like a Mythalan I’m sure I’ll mess up all the ritual responses.” That wasn’t even remotely true, but it was the response she needed to make. Both the trooper and the magister relaxed immensely to hear it, and Jugthar Sendahli even gave her a tentative smile. Sathmin reached out and clasped his forearm, entirely giving herself away by using the garthan to garthan welcome between friends with a purely Andaran nod to complete the motion.
Gadrial’s laugh was music to Sathmin’s ears. She hadn’t totally failed the first introductions at least, and she ushered the party in for lunch after ascertaining that Trooper Sendahli didn’t mind staying to eat and that his family was, as she’d guessed, not housed anywhere near Portalis anyway. It would be here or the temporary barracks for him, and she had every intention that it would be here.
After the court took Sendahli’s testimony, he’d be assigned to a local garrison, and she also intended to ensure that any duties that might naturally be assigned to a visiting trooper were kept flexible enough to allow him a week or two off to visit his family on the far side of the continent.
If army commitments wouldn’t allow that, she’d try to arrange for some of Jugthar Sendahli’s family to visit Garth Showma as her guests. Those invitations were easy enough to arrange between Andarans, but her interactions with garthan ancestry Mythalans were hit and miss. A wrongly phrased invitation could be too easily confused with a Mythalan shakira’s order for a garthan peasant to become a house servant, and Sathmin had no desire to inspire fear. A family recently escaped from Mythal might have any number of psychological wounds she didn’t want to open.
Sathmin danced through the polite social forms carefully. It wasn’t easy—not when Jasak held his shoulders lower than she’d ever seen and had aged more in the last year than he should have from a strict counting of calendar days. And the unease in Shaylar and Jathmar’s faces cried out to her heart, however bravely they tried to hide it…and not just because they were her son’s shardonai. But that, at least, she could do something about, she hoped.
She personally showed the Sharonians to the green suite and offered other rooms to Threbuch and Sendahli. For Gadrial Kelbryan there was a lady’s retiring room and a suite as well, but she expressed a desire to stay at her own home on the Institute grounds. Sathmin had half-expected that and tried not to push as she insisted the offer would remain open.
“If you’d ever like to stop by or perhaps visit for a bit, a tea, a meal, you’re always welcome.”
“Thank you.” Gadrial said. “That was a formal summons from the Commandery wasn’t it?”
Sathmin nodded, grim.
“I’d hoped we could all have one night’s rest first,” Gadrial’s tone was harsh, “but I suppose the military’s waited long enough for us to get here.” She paused. “I saw the red uniform through the doorway when Jasak went in after the duke. Is it an inquiry or a court-martial?”
“Formal summons to a court of inquiry. But—” Sathmin couldn’t leave the magister with false hope “—there will be a court-martial too. Thankhar will have to call for it if no one else does.”
“Of course. An officer does the best he can in a horrible situation, and his supervisors have to dissect his every decision the instant he returns home.” Gadrial laughed with an edge of bitterness. “Welcome to Portalis.”
Sathmin grabbed the magister’s hand. “He has us. We’ll get him through. And his father will ensure he’s treated fairly. Portalis is an odd mix of Mythal, Ransar, and Andara, but there’s honor here. And the Union has to learn why it was horrible out there. You were there and I wasn’t, but it doesn’t sound like everyone else was trying to do their best.”
“No.” Gadrial agreed. “They certainly were not. And I’ll be testifying to that if I have to enchant the doors of court myself to gain an entry.”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” Sathmin assured her as she walked the magister out.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Hayrn 18, 206 YU
Darikhal 21, 5053 AE
[January 9, 1929 CE]
Emm vos Sidus hated Portalis. He hated the crowds of people, the racket, the disgusting mélange of Gifted and non-Gifted, and the need to pretend he didn’t hate all that. Even the pristine magic source of the falls emitted a frost-coating mist instead of proper humidity.
The high-climbing city structures were filled with offices and manufactories, with not a palace in the lot. Portalis, on either side of the portal, hardly deserved the name of city. Even the Duke of Garth Showma’s own family had little apartments in the city. A shakira with that demesne would level the mess of trees, build a proper villa with orderly plantings and garden the grounds. Emm would add a few dragon breeding fields and set garthan to working fields and livestock across the larger duchy to support the elite in the city, but Thankhar Olderhan did nothing so useful.
Instead the duke had his sizable living quarters in a corner of the Garth Showma demesne quite a ways distant from Portalis, leased property to merchants and army clerks, and allowed the masses to harvest deadfall timber from his private woods. The Olderhans didn’t even stock the forests with predator game animals.
The Duchy of Garth Showma could be bearable in the summer months, when the wet of the falls cooled the skin instead of freezing to it. Not so in midwinter. Pretending to like Garth Showma’s Snowfall Night festivities was yet another thing Emm hated about Portalis.
As a member of the shakira sent to treat with the upper crust of Andara, he had to lodge in what passed for elegance in a hotel near Garth Showma Institute. The lobby’s wide windows proudly showed the falls choked by ice and snow with only a few of the base station chargers online to repower accumulators. Winter always affected the falls…yet another reason the flawed diamond of Andara could never compare to the brilliance of Mythal.
The Andarans grouped their hotel rooms in squads, small cramped rooms all of a size circled a common room. The clerks assumed a senior officer would share the same quarters and provisions as his men, and that any business traveler with his staff would likewise imitate Andaran military customs.
Andarans were idiots.
Emm vos Sidus took a full grouping. His staff were garthantri, drawn from the subclass who’d demonstrated personal loyalty to their betters for at least three generations. They were as magicless as all garthans but the very the best of their kind and they would adjust the place to better suit his needs while he took a leisurely lunch with an old friend. The common area would be his main chamber with most of the quartering spaces to become holding areas for his clothing, personal necessities, and bathing room. The lot of them would take turns sleeping in the remaining pair of rooms and use the bath down the hall.
They wouldn’t bother him with the details, so vos Sidus put it from his mind. He was shakira. His task was the work of magic and those small duties assigned to him by his seniors, and his job today was a lunch, so a lunch he would have.
The �
��old friend” in question was a contact and not actually a companion in any true sense, but Emm vos Sidus did what his superiors asked, even if that meant taking up a friendship with an only barely gifted Andaran. And Nosak Urrihan had risen to the highest ranks of the Andarans now. It was only appropriate, vos Sidus agreed, for a person with some magic ability to be placed over so many with absolutely none, but if the man had been Mythalan he would have been carefully ringed all round by a cohort of many-generations-loyal garthantri. And probably with an equally carefully selected tutor. Someone needed to turn Nosak Urrihan’s dabblings into something approximating competence, anyway.
