Lucien had turned as soon as the bedroom door opened. Started to say something, then stopped and stared as she posed in the bedroom entry, still and stylized as one of her mother’s statues. She didn’t speak and neither did he—adaptable animal that he was, he never asked a single question. He simply walked toward her, peeling off his dress uniform along the way until, by the time he reached her, he was as naked as she was.
He called me a goddess. Among other things he murmured. Whispered. Shouted. So enraptured had they been with one another that they hadn’t even noticed the necklace had broken until the morning.
“That was some night.” And now the time had come to pay the price for it. “What have you come to collect, Lucien?” She stood and continued on her way to the meeting house. “And who have you come to collect it for?”
CHAPTER 6
“It does not make sense.” Tsecha pointed to the half-tiled wall, a mélange of delicate colorings and sketched detail. “What is this? I have never seen anything such as this before.”
Ní Dathim Naré, Tsecha’s secular suborn, stood beside his dominant with the ill-concealed irritation of an artist coping with the criticism of a wealthy but tasteless client. “Through the middle is the line of the cliffs. Drawn there are the houses of Thalassa. If you stood on a craft, out on the bay, you would see this place as such.” Judging from the increasing curve of his shoulders and the stiff set of his jaw, aboard a craft out on the bay was exactly where he wished Tsecha was at that moment.
Tsecha stepped close to the wall. “It does not look like a cliff.”
“It does from here.” Jani leaned against the wall directly across from the mural. “I think you need to stand at least five or six meters away for it to all fall into place.”
Dathim nodded. “At least five or six meters.”
Tsecha took a single step back from the work, shoulders curving in irritation. “It does not help.”
“Five or six meters.” Jani and Dathim spoke in unison. Then Dathim took the bull by the horns, or in this case the propitiator by the elbow, and dragged him backward, marking off the distance with measured strides.
“Here.” Dathim released his dominant, then stepped back and waited, arms folded, feet planted shoulders’ length apart, like a djinn from one of Niall’s operas. Tall and broad, dressed in dusty white workclothes that contrasted sharply with his gold-brown Vynshàrau coloring, he seemed a construct of wood and stone, as one with the buildings surrounding them. “Do you see it now?” His voice, a deadpan rival of John’s, rumbled like a seismic shift.
Tsecha stared at the wall, tilting his head to one side, then the other. “I am not sure. Perhaps, nìa, we should request Doctor Parini’s assistance?”
Jani shrugged. “John’s the art collector. He knows more.”
“But John has already seen this wall many times. Doctor Parini provides a fresh eye.” Tsecha looked back over his shoulder at Jani and bared his teeth.
Fresh eye, my… Jani had to smile back. “You didn’t ask me here to talk about the wall. I should have guessed.”
“It will not be completed in time for tomorrow’s meeting. Such is as it is.” Dathim picked up a square of tile with a glaze like the clear aquamarine of shallow water and walked to his worktable. “I thus have time to seek out the opinions of others.” He inserted the square into one of his array of tile cutters, then bent low over the device and adjusted the settings. “Others, who know more,” he added, not quite under his breath.
Tsecha ignored his suborn’s mutterings. He clasped his hands behind his back and walked over to Jani, light mood dissipating with each step. “Of what did Doctor Parini speak? The damned cold of Chicago? His boredom now that his friends have left him?” He paced back and forth in front of her, an older, wiser, more patient djinn.
“Li Cao sent Val here to inform John that he’s being bought out. John’s opinion on the subject is not being considered. He’ll be paid two percent of what his share in Neoclona is worth.” Jani remembered Lucien as he broke the news. Drunk, angry, the information he imparted a payback for her rejection. “Val made matters that much worse by bringing Lucien with him.” And I hope he heaved his guts out.
“Ah, Captain Pascal.” Tsecha walked a tight circle. “He grew bored in Chicago as well, without you to torment.”
Jani kicked a tile shard across the floor as another scene from the balcony flitted through her brain. I love you. Oh, for the days of myth, when djinn walked the land and gods smote liars with thunderbolts. “He says he’s here to act as a fresh eye for Admiral General Mako. I don’t believe that.”
“Nor would I.” Tsecha touched Jani’s arm, then gestured toward the patio located in the rear of the meeting house. “For Mako despises him. This we know, and truly.”
As they entered the patio, the heat hit them full force, untempered by the breeze off the bay. Tsecha inhaled deeply as soon as the sun fell on him, as though he could breathe in the light. “Cao fears John will become an Haárin, and will use his money to support Haárin enclaves, and Haárin companies. That he will rebuild Haárin docks destroyed by humanish bombs. This, I most believe.” He sat atop a pallet of floor tile. “Such shows her lack of understanding. John would never be accepted as Haárin. It would be an impossibility.”
“Haárin would take his money, though. If he offered it. Which he hasn’t.” Jani leaned against a stone wall, then slid down to the patio floor. And so it begins. The back and forth. The sifting of data until a conclusion could be reached. The hardest process, but in the end, the most educational. Politics. The glib, inadequate word that described the many faceted relationship between Commonwealth and worldskein. “Lucien said that John was being made an example. ‘If we can destroy one of the most powerful men in the Commonwealth, what could we do to you?’” She slipped off the jacket that she’d donned back at the Main House, then leaned back against the wall and let the heat absorbed by the stone seep into her shoulders. “My concern is that she’s heard rumblings about Elyas’ desire to secede.”
Tsecha shifted as though he sat on a sharp edge of tile. “Talk of colonial secession. I heard such even when I served as ambassador in damned cold Chicago.”
“But here we have an actual plot, with names attached.” Jani picked at a jacket seam, stopping when she yanked too hard and the material split. “John is so far removed from all that. All he’s done since he arrived here is perform research and hybridize the willing.” She imagined faces seen every day at the Main House, on the cliff road and the other enclave streets. Eager, hopeful faces. “Some of them will die if he can’t treat them anymore, if he can only use the technology he’s already developed. We’re all moving targets, constantly changing. A treatment that will work on us one day could kill us the next.”
Tsecha nodded, an exaggerated up-and-down. “So, he is needed to keep Thalassans alive. Such is an ethical issue. If Li Cao destroys him, she destroys others as well. Innocents.” He brightened. “Would you like me to write a treatise on the subject, nìa?”
Jani ignored the question, and instead dreamt of thunderbolts striking far-off prime ministers. “How can she do this? We aren’t Commonwealth citizens anymore. We can’t vote. Half of us started life as idomeni. It’s not—”
“You have not answered my question about the treatise, nìa.”
“Let’s not do that right away. Your treatises tend to shear off the tops of heads. It’s bad enough when you take on idomeni. Your style may backfire with humanish.”
“Ah.” Tsecha ran his finger across his forehead and bared his teeth. Then he stood and strolled across the patio, eyes fixed on the sunburst murals with which Dathim had covered the floor. “So. John will no longer be able to treat hybrids. The hybrids of Thalassa, whom I esteem greatly, even when my nìa claims I do not.” He glanced across at Jani. “My nìa, whom I also esteem greatly.” He stopped and raised a hand, index finger pointing upward. “Li Cao deems this. Tomorrow, we meet with those who work against her. It is most simp
le. If Markos and his other secessionists wish my support, they will see that John can continue to do that which he does. Even now, they will support him by telling Cao that she cannot do that which she plans.”
Jani worked to her feet. “They’d be taking a risk.”
“They take risks now.” Tsecha shrugged. “One more will not make their chance of death any greater. They must agree to support Thalassa, which means that they must work now to help John. Or they may swing.”
“Swing?”
Tsecha mimed looping a rope and putting it around his neck. “Swing.” He yanked his arm upward and stuck out his tongue.
“Thank you for that visual.” Jani managed a laugh. “Can you give John your support even if Markos and the others can’t? Can the Elyan Haárin do anything to compel Li Cao to back down?”
Tsecha raised a hand to chest level, then curved it in question. “She would demand, I think, that the Haárin leave the Outer Circle, which is something that would most please Cèel as well. He starves his colonies, allows them no supply or repair. Samvasta, Nèae, Zela, with their broken Gate-Ways and half-empty enclaves. He drives the Haárin who live there to the humanish, and now Li Cao would drive them back to him.”
“What if you pledged to sink your teeth deeper? Take over more businesses, more docks?” Jani sighed. “That might scare her, which will cause more problems than it solves.” She tied the sleeves of the jacket around her waist, then walked to the entry that led back into the house proper, boots scuffing against the inlay with a sound like sandpaper. “God, this is a mess.”
“We will think of something, nìa.” Tsecha moved in beside her, his soft boots silent on the stone.
“Why do we have to?” Jani paused at the entry. “Ná Feyó is your secular dominant. Ná Gisa is mine. Technically. When she sticks her head out of whichever greenhouse she’s working in long enough to give me the time of day.”
Tsecha regarded her calmly, as though they discussed the weather, not political subterfuge and rebellion. “I most esteem Feyó, but she worries too much of authority, and the opinions of the other enclaves. Power has made her cautious, and this is, I most believe, a time to be daring.”
Jani leaned against the entry so that she stood half in and half out of the house, one side in shade, the other in sun. “You want daring, you should bring Gisa with you to tomorrow’s meeting.”
“Nìa.”
“OK, she’s irritating, but she merits some regard. She helped create Thalassa.”
“She did that of which she was capable. Now her time is past.” Tsecha stood in the comparative darkness of the entry. “Rebellion requires focus if it is to be worth anything, and Gisa lacks focus.” He leaned forward, the edges of sunlight striking him, highlighting the lines on his face. “If you say black, she will argue white simply to argue. Such is not an attitude that is needed. Not now.”
“So you and I can continue to do all the diplomatic dirty work, then hand off all the pretty decisions to our dominants, wrapped up and ready to go.”
Tsecha nodded. “Yes. Such is what we do.” He reached out and tapped the top of her hand with his fingertips. “As we did in Rauta Shèràa, and in Chicago. As we will always do.”
“Something to look forward to.” Jani reached up and struck her fist against the top of the doorway as she passed through into the cool of the entry. “Any feedback yet on your latest broadside?”
Tsecha hesitated, hand once more curving in question. Then he bared his teeth. “Wholeness of Soul.” He walked farther into the meeting room, stopping to study the floor, a room-spanning blue and white whirlpool. “It is too soon. I would not expect even an acknowledgment of receipt until tomorrow or even the next day.” He dragged the toe of his boot along one of the blue-white borders. “Does it still worry you?”
“Everything worries me.” Jani lowered her voice as two coverall-clad hybrids entered the house and began carrying stacks of tile to the table where Dathim worked. “Niall doesn’t think it will be a problem.”
“Colonel Pierce.” Tsecha offered a more humanish-looking, close-lipped smile. “To whom you tell everything.”
“Not really.” Jani felt the heat rise up her neck as she thought of all the things she would never think of telling Niall. “I tell you more than I do anyone. Including some things I hope you don’t understand.”
Tsecha did a decent imitation of a humanish throat-clearing. “I understand more than you believe, nìa.”
“Great.” Jani covered her eyes, then let her hands fall. “All my idiocies exposed.” She felt more welcome laughter bubble up, until an all-too-familiar figure entered the room and stopped it dead. “Ná Meva.”
“Ná Kièrshia. Glories of the day.” Ná Meva Tan bustled in, a headmistress on a mission, the long tail of her bright green wrapshirt flaring in her wake. “Ní Tsecha. Glories of the day to you as well.” Her grey-streaked horsetail swung out as she spun around to survey the entry. “More than yesterday, but not yet complete, ní Dathim!”
“Everyone is a critic.” Dathim turned to face them. “But I see no one picking up a cutter.” Tile dust streaked his face like paint. “Until they do, they can shut up.” He gestured to one of his hybrid helpers to bring another stack of tile, then turned back to his table.
“Hah.” Meva bared her teeth as the hum of the tile cutter filled the room. “Ní Dathim is as he always is.”
Aren’t we all? Jani stepped back as Meva and Tsecha fell into a discussion of the patterns Dathim had chosen for the meeting house floors. Meva stood as tall as her religious dominant, her face as stark, her eyes as gold. Like Tsecha, she projected implacability, the inevitable progression of a wave. Rauta Shèràa Temple had cast her out just before Morden nìRau Cèel locked her up, and Tsecha had offered her a place without first confirming with ná Feyó that such would be acceptable. Meva treads on toes. Such was her way. I do like her…for the most part. But she provided Tsecha the opportunity for theological debate that he had lacked for years, and like a desert plant after the first rain of the season, he had flourished.
Then came the first treatise. The second. And now this one. The rhetoric escalating as the subject matter cut closer and closer to the heart of what it meant to be idomeni.
“The significance of this—” Meva gestured toward the spiraling whirlpool, then turned to Jani. “You recall such, from your instruction?”
Damn. Jani left the refuge of her corner and joined the two elders near the middle of the floor. “The twinned spiral.” She racked her brain. “Blue for water, white for air. The connectedness of life elements, separate yet united, traveling in the same direction until oneness is achieved.” She glanced at Tsecha, who continued to study the floor. At Rauta Shèràa Academy, students could find themselves subjected to testing at any time, and as one of the past masters of that particular art, he would see no reason to interrupt what he saw as valid examination.
Meva nodded. “Shiou oversees this progression, of course, for she is of order.”
“No.” Jani bit back the word inshah. Teacher. That title, she reserved for one and one only. “The progression is over-seen by Anèth, the guardian of passage, migration, transition—”
“He is body-son of Caith.”
“No, he—” Jani caught Tsecha’s flinch, and knew she’d failed this particular test the instant before Meva bared her teeth and let out a derisive bark of laughter.
“Anèth is body-son of Caith, for chaos and transition are also separate but united. In any transition is the potential for chaotic progression.” Meva stepped out to the whirlpool’s center and paced around it. “This is a representation of Anèth’s guardianship, for the elements remain united to the end. If such represented his relation with Caith, the whorls would diverge along the way, and form eddies, and curve back on themselves. Such as the representation on the secondary floor of Rauta Shèràa Temple—Tsecha, do you recall such?”
“Yes, ná Meva, I recall it most well.” Tsecha finally turned to look a
t Jani, his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze fixed at a point over her left shoulder. The formality of the Academy returned. “The colors of divergence are more similar. Darker gold and lighter, in depiction of the relation of body-mother and body-child. The game of pattern stones evolved from this. The changing patterns represent the interruption of the journey as chaos enters, for the pattern change is unexpected, unbidden.” His Vynshàrau Haárin acquired High Vynshàrau inflections as his manner grew more detached. “You should study more, Jani Kilian. You should know this by now.”
Words from the past, driven home with the softest yet most direct of blows. “Yes, inshah. I will do so.” I will add it to my goddamned list. She stood up straight, left arm crossed over her chest, a student’s posture of respect. Tsecha raised his left hand in dismissal, the barest flick of a finger, before falling in behind Meva and following her into the adjoining room.
So much for that. Jani walked to the door, face aflame. At least the hybrids are outside. Otherwise the news of Tsecha’s reprimand would have coursed through the enclave by the time she reached the top of the street.
“Ná Meva speaks of you to ní Tsecha.”
Jani stopped and turned back to the worktable, where Dathim smoothed the edge of a tile triangle.
“She does not believe you should act as a propitiator.” The Haárin’s attention remained focused on the cutter, his fingers flicking over the controller. “She does not believe it is that which you are.”
Jani shivered as chill anger drove out the heat of embarrassment. I never spoke against her to him. I knew he esteemed her, and I kept my mouth shut. Proof once again that no good deed ever went unpunished. “And what does she think I am?”
Dathim shrugged. “She never says.” He glanced at her through a haze of white powder. “Ní Tsecha defends you.”
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