by Mary Gentle
A young woman, with dark hair and slanting brows; she stood in the Merrum sunlight, sweating under the weight of WEBcorders. I know you, I thought; not correcting her assumption that I was the Company representative now. Or I’ve seen you, or –
‘Roxana Visconti, Trismegistus WEB,’ she introduced herself. ‘Ms Christie, I wonder if you’d like to comment on the on-world situation here?’
Dust still rose from the distant track into the summer air. Closer now: possible to make out that it was a group of riders. The Wellhouse yard seethed with activity: Ortheans in priest’s skirts bustling in and out of the Wellhouse itself, males and females with the gold crest of the Crown Guard checking winchbows and harur-blades, ashiren scrambling up on to the low outer wall to point and yell. There were Ortheans outside the outer wall, mostly wearing the thin robes of Melkathi; many with the faces of Keverilde or Rimnith telestre. Momentarily I wished I had some control over them.
‘It’ll have to wait –’
‘Is it true that Commander Mendez is launching a full-scale investigation into the death of Representative Rachel? Will you yourself be returning to the Harantish settlement in the near future?’
I thought of Jamison, left to guard the T&A site at Kel Harantish; of Corazon Mendez up in the orbiter. Somehow none of it seems to have any relevance to who Molly was.
‘This will have to wait. Look down there.’ I pointed towards Keverilde, the lace-silhouettes of charred ziku and hanelys, the black earth, the tumbled stones visible even at this distance – of the telestre-house Spirals of smoke went up into the air. Cooking-fires. ‘You can’t see, but there are two or three thousand guerrilla fighters in that area. What we’re trying to do here is talk. Defuse the situation. Ms Visconti, I will talk to Trismegistus, but not right now. Not when there’s a representative of the Anzhadi about to arrive.’
‘What responsibility is the Company taking for this?’
Jesus Christ, I thought, now it’s me that has to answer the awkward questions.
I said, ‘What does public opinion back home make of this?’
‘The response is – unfavourable.’
‘Good.’
When she looked sceptical, I added, ‘There should be an impartial group here. Look, Ms Visconti, if you want to keep me informed about how they react at home, I might be in a position to help Trismegistus here. How does that sound?’
She eased the strap of the WEBcorder on her shoulder. Patches of sweat showed under the arms of her coveralls. ‘I refuse to gloss over what PanOceania’s doing to Carrick V, if that’s what you mean.’
‘You tell it as you see it.’ I saw Douggie beckon. ‘Excuse me; I have to go.’
Ashiel’s outer wall is decorative, only a few feet high; and the gate-arch is a curving hoop of brickwork. Now, in early Merrum, young rashaku perched there, their scaled breasts glinting in the sun. Harsh metallic cries rang out: their warning. I walked to join the others at the gate, as the troop of riders came towards us.
‘Let them through.’
Nelum Santhil’s voice was not loud, but it carried to the male and female Ortheans outside the yard. Some muttered; others stepped back a pace or two. Is it because he’s Rimnith telestre? I thought. Because he’s suffered? He wore plain shirt and britches; there was nothing to mark him out as T’An Suthai-Telestre.
Haltern Beth’ru-elen shifted his grip to my arm instead of Nelum Santhil’s. Membrane flicked across his eyes; the skin round them crinkled. His grip wasn’t strong. ‘Are they there, S’aranth-te?’
‘I … yes, I can see four or five people from the Coast.’
Marhaz walked delicately, lifting their split pads from the dusty track and replacing them with care. Their feather-fur pelts glinted bronze and white and black. Most of the riders wore green tunics with gold-crest badges, the mark of the T’An Suthai-Telestre’s Guard; and these were war-marhaz, both wickedly-sharp pairs of horns left uncropped. Almost lost in the mêlée were four riders in meshabi-robes.
After the marhaz, and now swinging wide round the group to draw up outside Ashiel, was a groundcar. A fair-haired Peace Force officer whom I recognized as Ottoway got out. He signalled to the foremost rider. I saw the scarred, dusty face of Blaize n’ri n’suth Meduenin, T’An Rimon.
The Earthspeaker Cassirur Almadhera said, ‘Bring them inside.’
The four Coast Ortheans slid down from the high marhaz saddles with obvious relief. Blaize let his marhaz pace beside them as they walked to the gate; Ottoway and two officers fell in on the other side. As they approached, I saw one stout and bronze-maned Coast Orthean with a flask dangling from his belt: Jadur, is it? Jadur Anzhadi. And the white-maned female there is either Wyrrin-hael or Charazir-hael … Both a head shorter than the telestre-Ortheans who pressed close in on them. A taller male, yellow-maned and white-skinned: no mistaking Sethri-safere. A female with him, with a dark mane and sallow skin – no, dark hair. In meshabi-robe, with a hook-knife at her belt –
‘That’s the Ishida girl!’ Doug stared.
Arrest her on suspicion of hi-tech arms trading? It’ll have to come, but: ‘Now isn’t the time to do anything, Douggie.’
The smell of marhaz dung was strong on the air; a complement to the heat. What can happen on such a day? But the tension is still there: stomach-wrenching; settling in the muscles between neck and shoulder.
‘Doug, what say you’re very understanding, very sympathetic. And then I’ll hit them with the jath-rai in the islands. Yes?’
He nodded absently, still staring after Pramila Ishida. Nelum Santhil and Cassirur were closest to the hiyek-Ortheans, moving them towards the Wellhouse entrance; and the rest of the crowd followed: Doug with Haltern, Ottoway, the Visconti girl, Tethmet’s tall, gaunt figure; males and females from Rimnith and Keverilde. Heat shimmered over Ashiel’s low domes. Not a rich Wellhouse – no Wellhouse in Melkathi is – it still had a surprising number of young ashiren within its walls. They ran underfoot, under marhaz-pads; pointing at the Coast Ortheans and shrieking. No Earthspeaker rebuked them.
I tacked myself on to the end of the group, and then a marhaz brushed past my shoulder, and Blaize Meduenin dismounted beside me. In that dusty yard, amid shrieking children and the hum of chirith-goyen hives, I saw how the slanting sun illuminated that old scar masking half his face.
Foolish: all I could say was, ‘I thought you would be T’An Suthai-Telestre.’
He gave the marhaz reins to an ashiren. ‘The Crown? Not me, I’m a fighter.’
‘Hal must be disappointed.’
‘Haltern Beth’ru-elen finds T’An Santhil –’ Blaize paused. ‘I don’t understand Haltern. Eight years ago Nelum Santhil took bribes from Kel Harantish; he betrayed the T’an Melkathi. Now he’s Crown.’
The stocky male beat dust from his clothing, and resettled harur-nilgiri and harur-nazari. I thought, Hal will find Nelum Santhil a kindred spirit; that’s what you mean.
The last telestre-Ortheans were disappearing inside the Wellhouse. Groups still sat outside the walls, on the sparse mossgrass. All had harwr-blades, most had winchbows. I turned to walk into the cool shadowed interior.
Blaize said, ‘I think about the Barrens. When we were there. Christie …’
‘When there was none of this, no fighting, no factions; nothing but to be together and play ochmir and wonder if, after all, the Woman Who Walks Far had abandoned us, and we would die – oh yes,’ I said. ‘I think about it. Or isn’t that what you wanted me to say?’
The hazy sun shone on angled ribs, visible through his sleeveless jacket; on paired nipples and skin with a fine reptilian grain. Membrane shuttered those whiteless blue eyes; claw-nailed hands clenched. It would be too easy to bury my hands in that silver-streaked mane where it roots down his spine.
‘We have to get inside –’
‘You make me envy the past,’ he said.
At last, from memory, came the face of that male in a far northern province; eight years ago and very distant now. Who had been,
in the Orthean tongue, arykei, lover, bed-friend. ‘Do you mean Sethin Falkyr?’
‘Him? No.’ He smiled: the scar twisted pain to mockery. ‘Christie, how can I be your arykei when you have no thought for any other arykei but amari Ruric Orhlandis? She’s dead, Christie. Dead and gone to Her bright Realm. I’ve seen your face when someone speaks her name. You won’t let her go.’
And as he turned to enter the Wellhouse, he added, ‘And will you die here, hope to return when she returns, live when she lives? Take your chance, S’aranth. She was Golden-blooded. They don’t return.’
Ashiel Wellhouse has no corridors. Round-walled room opens into round-walled room: some are kitchens, some dormitories, some for storage. Slot-windows let in sunlight. It shone on white plaster walls, on the bright manes of telestre-Ortheans, picking them out from twilight. In the way of the Hundred Thousand, there was no central meeting, but a dozen or so groups talking at the top of their voices, and Jadur and Wyrrin-hael and Sethri each separately cornered.
I sat down at the edge of the group surrounding Sethri, on a bench beside Haltern Beth’ru-elen. The old male glanced at me. Then he looked again, milky membrane sliding back from those pale eyes.
‘They tell me you have been to Kel Harantish, and to Kasabaarde. Christie, I have seen people who looked better for that journey.’
I’ve long since given up wondering how Hal gets to know what he knows. I said, ‘I’ve just been told something, and I don’t know whether it’s suddenly crystallized a thought I’ve had, or whether it’s completely wrong …’
Sethri’s voice came clearly from where he stood facing the Earthspeaker Cassirur Almadhera: ‘You give poor choices, shan’tai-keretne! Stay where we are, be attacked, driven out and killed. Or else enter your houses peacefully by ones and twos – and be killed. Where’s the choice in that?’
He stood with a weary arrogance, speaking a thickly-accented Melkathi tongue.
‘Kill all four of them!’ called a young male, from the back of the room.
‘That won’t end this, Anzhadi-hiyek has more than we to sustain it.’
Doug Clifford leaned forward, putting a restraining hand on Cassirur’s shoulder. I saw how he deliberately avoided looking at Pramila Ishida, where the Pacifican girl sat beside Sethri Anzhadi. ‘Shan’tai Sethri, I assure you that we are fully cognizant of the problems you face. This is a precarious situation, we don’t wish it to disintegrate further. If a way could be found for your people to make a tactical withdrawal from this area, then that might ease tensions on both sides.’
Nice one, Douggie, I thought. The sunlight in that pale, domed room picked out crystal beads woven into black and brown and scarlet manes; it shone on the smooth-worn hilts of harur-blades, and on faces that now turned to stare at us. I pitched my voice to carry as far as Sethri-Safere: ‘Before we discuss that, let’s talk about the other hiyeks. Let’s talk about the warships that are only days away from here in the Kasabaarde Archipelago – when they sail back to the Coast harbours, then’s the time to talk about getting you out of here, shan’tai Sethri.’
Mention of the jath ships in the islands made a babble of discussion break out among the telestre-Ortheans. Nelum Santhil left Wyrrin-hael to speak with Cassirur. Sethri-safere looked over their heads and smiled at me. That fox-face was thinner now, and the yellow mane straggling; still, he nodded an appreciation of intrigue.
My wristlink chimed softly. I hesitated, torn between priorities; but Doug was handling things well. With a quiet word to Hal, I left the room, looking for a chamber slightly less crowded, to speak in private. Privacy is not a telestre concept. I came at last to an archway leading into a larger domed room, where sunlight fell through a roof-slot on to white plaster walls. A black circular opening in the floor marked the Well of the Goddess. No Ortheans were there. I stepped inside.
‘Christie here.’
‘Mendez.’ Corazon’s image formed, small and clear. Behind her was one of the orbiter’s control rooms. She looked at me, that sharp-planed face uncharacteristically wary. ‘I can meet you in two hours, I’m making planetfall again then. What’s the purpose of this?’
‘Not something I want to discuss on open-channel. Cory, will you do me a favour?’ Always ask, when it isn’t necessary to order. ‘Will you put the Kasabaarde settlement off-limits for the present? No landings, no overflights. Just surveillance. There is a reason. I’ll discuss it with you when we meet. I’m at –’ I gave the co-ordinates of the Ashiel Wellhouse.
‘Yes.’ She linked bony fingers, and her thick silver rings caught the light. ‘Ottoway reports you’re making progress.’
‘We’ve got a lever,’ I said. ‘The Anzhadi are isolated here, cut off. We’re working on that one. A small group in hostile country. We might be able to lever the jath ships back to Reshebet and Nadrasiir and the other Coast ports.’
In the interests of co-operation I didn’t say: Their having few harbours to go back to doesn’t make this any easier …
‘You may be all right,’ Corazon Mendez said, reaching out to cut the link. ‘Assuming your Coast Ortheans don’t have much in the way of black-market hi-tech weaponry.’
I stared at static: her image gone.
A small ashiren with black mane and brown skin padded in. Ke looked five or six seasons old. Black-bead eyes glanced up at me, and then the child crossed to the Wellmouth, and dipped a bowl into the water. Ke drank noisily.
‘Ashiren-te –’
The child pushed its mane back from its face, with a six-fingered hand on which the claws were tiny and perfect. Dipping the bowl again into the Well, ke offered it to me. I walked across to take it, and drink; and as I lifted the bowl, it came into the shaft of sunlight, blazed white: to drink was to drink liquid light, as cold as the stone from which it was drawn.
‘Ashiren-te, will you go to your Earthspeaker for me? Ask him to bring the t’an Ishida here – the offworlder who is with the Coast people.’
‘Yes,’ the child said. Then: ‘I’ll do it if it will make you s’aranthi leave this Wellhouse.’
I stared after the child as it padded out on bare feet. Ke would not have been born when I was in Orthe before. Would have lived in that eternal circle of turn and return, year and year, land and sea. And now to find a world that we, or the rest of the universe, has made different …
Feet scuffed the floor, startling me out of my thoughts.
‘I don’t have anything to say to you,’ Pramila Ishida said, as she walked across to stare down at the Well. Her image reflected in the black water: this young woman, with sallow skin now grimed with dust, brown hair roughly braided up; her meshabi-robe torn at the hem.
‘I don’t know what to say to you …’It was intended to be disarming, it was (I discovered) true.
‘Arrest me,’ she invited. ‘The Anzhadi will see it as provocation, of course. Or I could just stay here, in Wellhouse sanctuary.’ She grinned, maliciously.
‘If the Company wants you, it will take you; and where you are or what you’re doing won’t matter. All I want to know from you is the extent of the arms trade that you allowed, and where those weapons are now.’ I let a pause occur, then finished: ‘Whatever loyalties you have now, some things override that. The prospect of a hi-tech war here is one of them.’
Her head lifted. I saw again those startling green eyes, and that face that now showed what emotion – pity?
‘I won’t tell you a thing,’ the Pacifican woman said. ‘That should upset the great Lynne Christie legend. As for threatening me with the Company … I intend to see the hiyeks get a fair deal, all of them, and you can’t do that by talk. At least I’ve got the courage to fight for what I believe.’ Pramila smiled. ‘Don’t be jealous, Ms Christie. I’ve done what you always wanted to do, and never could – commit myself to Orthe. I’m with Sethri now. The hiyeks are my people. A lot of what I’ve had to do is wrong, but that’s better than doing nothing at all.’
‘There might be some truth in that,’ I admitted.
‘As for what’s wrong with it, I despair of explaining that to you – go on, get out of here. Get out of my sight.’
The domed room was quiet when she’d gone. Voices beyond sounded muffled. A scent drifted in: heat and marhaz and the lairs of rashaku. The sun’s light shifted almost imperceptibly towards noon, when it could shine full on the Wellmouth: water blazing with light …
I waited those few minutes. But it is only light and water.
Towards mid-afternoon, a groundcar jolted down one of the tracks from the west. Cory Mendez got out. I walked as far as the gate-arch, the air like warm water on my skin; and saw her give orders to her officers before heading in my direction.
‘I’ve been in contact with Jamison, over at the Harantish settlement.’ She paused, letting her gaze sweep over the ever-growing number of Ortheans in the Wellhouse yard and the ziku groves. Her mental shrug of dismissal was almost visible. She went on, ‘I wanted Jamison to inform the local leaders that I plan a full investigation into Representative Rachel’s death. Unfortunately, neither that self-styled “Empress” nor her “Voice” appears to be available.’ She clasped her ringed hands behind her back. ‘I’ve brought ten F90s down on Kumiel Island.’
‘That’s two-thirds of your Force.’
‘That’s right,’ she acknowledged.
‘If we overreact …’
‘I can’t take risks. This is a highly unstable situation.’ She glanced back at the groundcar. A man whom I had taken to be Peace Force climbed out, and I saw that it was the acting head of the research team, Ravi Singh.
Corazon turned back to me: ‘Why call this meeting so urgently, and why insist on in-person, not holo-contact?’
Chirith-goyen swarmed noisily round our heads, glinting among the kazsis-vine that here swamped the crumbling brickwork of the outer wall.
‘It has to be secure,’ I said.
Blaize Meduenin stepped out of one of the further outbuildings, talking with an older ashiren. Too far off to hear what he said; but I saw the ashiren fix a message-scroll to the rashaku’s hind claw and let it soar free. They stood gazing after it, until it circled round and flew off westwards toward Tathcaer. I thought, What I know and what I can’t say puts a distance now between us, between me and Hal and Nelum Santhil and Cassirur … I could find it in me to hate the Hexenmeister for that.
