by G. Howell
“She stayed with him for some time. She provided company for him and the self-harm attempts ended. All the while she reported to Shattered Water, relating what she’d learned. In turn, he trusted her to such an extent that she must’ve found it extremely easy to betrayed him.
“She was an agent, a [something] planted in Shattered Water. Neighboring kingdoms had had troubles with internal factions, including some who were receiving aid from external sources trying to exploit the new knowledge in Shattered Water for personal and political gain. Agents in Shattered Water were attempting to track the suppliers and it was nothing but chance that she’d first encountered the outsider, but she’d played that opportunity for everything it was worth and successfully ridden every possibility from there. There had been suspicions about her, but the entire scheme had been conducted to a timeframe that ensured there wasn’t sufficient time to gather evidence. She was quite competent. Perhaps one of their best.”
I tried to stare at him. My eyes wouldn’t focus.
“The outsider was bait. It was taken. The leak in Shattered Water was sealed and the smuggler trail uncovered and tracked to its source and the doctor vanished back into the undergrowth. Tracing her would be interesting, but it isn’t a priority.
“What was of more concern was the outsider’s reaction. He’d be seriously injured physically and he was recovering from that, but nobody was entirely sure of what would happen to his [mental state] after her... departure. She’d arranged for notes to be delivered after she was gone and those contained information nobody was sure was accurate or even possible. She’d also arranged for the teacher the outsider had first met in Westwater to be transported to Shattered Water. When the teacher went missing, the subject went to what could be called insane efforts to try and recover her.
“That matter was somewhat overshadowed by something that caused a great deal more ripples. In an instance that drew the Guild’s full attention, a well-armed vessel was destroyed by a smaller craft armed with only a single weapon created with the new technologies Land-of-Water had acquired. The incident had not been intended: it was a desperate attempt to save the outsider, but it did reveal to the world in a most emphatic manner just what an entity possessing this resource could achieve. This was a fact not lost on the Guild.
“The ripples from this entire incident reached at least as far as Lying Scales. A matter of days after I received reports from my sources, both myself and my master received a summons to the hall in Meetings. We were to report there as soon as was possible. We complied, taking courier transportation where possible and making good time over the water route. There was nothing out of the ordinary until we reached Saisa’s End.
“That was a small town, but it was impossible not to notice the disproportionate Mediator presence. Stables were full, as were many lodgings. There were ships in the port that would not have normally called at such a destination. There were Guild members from all over the region gathered there.
“Almost as soon as we entered town we were approached, our presence demanded before another Guild Master, Jaesith aesh Raeshon. She explained Lord ah Richtkah’s plans. She explained her own ideas, how the outsider was too important to all Rris to eliminate and I was vital a source of information about it. We talked for some time. I listened. Her ideas... they were not without merit in some regards. Enough that there were those willing to follow. I told her what she wanted to hear. She requested I bring the creature to her and told us to go.
“From Saisa’s End we crossed Lake Endless to Meetings. At the Guild Hall there Lord ah Richtkah interviewed me, requesting everything I knew about the outsider. I gave it. The information was deliberated upon for a single day before he put forward the suggestion that the creature was to destabilizing to be allowed to live freely. I protested this, with the backing of my Master. We maintained that it was too valuable to simply kill; that there would be problems, but there are always problems. That is why the Guild exists. To destroy something because it simply inconveniences you is to break the ice you stand on.
“It was maintained that the Guild charter wasn’t to repair problems, it was to avoid them. The creature went beyond an inconvenience: It was entire unpredictable, perhaps insane, perhaps an agent of some kind. Its mere presence had already cause disruption and bickering and nearly outright war between the nations; even the Guild was roiling. They were aware of aesh Raeshon’s activities, but could take no outright action. The wisest action – the only sensible action - would be to remove the source of the problem.”
I’d heard that. Why was he saying it again? Something was important. And something else inside me was screaming. The anxiety percolated through the fog hanging over everything else and I struggled to focus. Just lifting my head made me giddy, but I could see the faces regarding me, watching Shyia. And Shyia was staring at me without a flicker of emotion.
“He was correct. At the time that was the clearest path. But now the situation has changed. Stabilized. What happened to aesh Raeshon’s demise was a [something] disaster, but her faction has dissolved. My Lord, you have control of the situation and the outsider, but you have refused to change your decree. You claim that the outsider might be an agent, or a spy. This possibility is remote at the best. You claim it is unpredictable. It is, in some ways, but in others it is like anyone else. It has leverage points. It has attachments to individuals. He nearly killed himself to save the teacher from the town, so there are sensitive areas there...”
Chihirae. Now he was talking about her. About things I’d done and emotions he’d never had any experience with and how they could be...
“A control,” he was saying. Words to that effect. Words like ‘leverage’ and ‘trained’.
The rage returned in a red surge that spiked through the lassitude and numbness and drove me to my feet and
I was laid out flat on something that swayed and creaked with movement. Metal clinked and rattled. I opened my eyes to see a puddle of lamp-lit whitewashed ceiling scroll by overhead. The back of a Rris loomed over me. Down there was another, watching and making a quick sound but otherwise not changing its grip on the stretcher’s handles. Another Rris face appeared from the gloom and said something that echoed through my muzzy senses. I blinked in confusion and tried to move but wasn’t sure anything happened.
Something patted my face and I feebly batted at the hand but my own limb flopped uselessly. The face leaned closer and as if through a kilometer of greasy wool I heard someone say something about something.
I closed my eyes again. That was a mistake: the movement of the stretcher made me feel ill. When it stopped, hands grabbed me and hauled me upright and once again everything spun and turned and when it stabilized I found I was looking at another ceiling, that of a small cell lit by a splash of light that had a feel of sunset about it. The cat face with those tall, twitching ears and intense eyes returned to hang over me, staring down with a quizzical expression as if there were something it wasn’t sure about. There was a low voice and something stroked though my beard and my hair, over and over again.
------v------
“Wake! Get up.”
The voice hadn’t woken me, it was the shaking that’d done that. I shifted away and opened my eyes and got an impression of hasty movement. “Get up,” the voice repeated.
I wasn’t sure what was happening or where I was. For a second I was sprawled on the stage in front of the Tribunal and Shyia was saying… things. And then reality washed over memory. It was a cell, in a Mediator Guild hall. It was night, dark. A sliver of moonlight slipped in through the window and there was the glimmer of a lamp out in the corridor beyond the doorway, but it wasn’t enough to see details. So the figures in the cell were just shapes, outlined in chiaroscuro where the light glowed through fur. Where it struck the metal of weapons or the oiled leather of Mediator armor it gleamed like something alive.
It wasn’t
the Tribunal hall, but what had been said there was real enough. With a bit of a struggle I propped myself up on my elbows. I felt thick-headed and muzzy and the movement also sent a wave of nausea washing through me. My shirt was gone, but I was still wearing my jeans. They’d also taken my boots and my feet were wrapped in bandages.
“Come on,” the figure closest to me jerked its head. The others were eyeing me like I was something that might just put up an interesting fight.
“Where?” I asked and for a few seconds didn’t think I was going to get an answer, but eventually the Mediator relented.
“The Tribunal sent for you,” was all I was told.
There were more than enough to drag me along if I didn’t cooperate, so I’d end up in the same place only even more scratched up. Not a great deal of choice. Besides, I had some questions of my own. I moved again, grimaced and clambered the rest of the way to my feet in a series of semi-coordinated lurches, bracing against the wall on the way up. Once standing I had to lean against it for another couple of seconds, catching my equilibrium. The dizziness wasn’t nearly as bad as it’d been earlier. Mediators watched and actually gave me a moment, then that closest one said, “Come along,” again and stood aside for me.
They weren’t hauling me away in chains at least. That seemed a change for the better. The armed silhouettes watched intently and silently as I limped out the door and stopped in the corridor. One of the Mediators waiting there was holding a glass-enclosed lantern by a looped handle, the low orange flame sputtering and throwing jittering shadows on the walls and floor. A hand waved in a come-along gesture and the shadows whirled as the Rris turned and led the way.
The guards took me from the cells, out into that atrium and cool night air. When I looked up I could see a handkerchief of velvet sky, a spill of stars washing across the patch of night visible just above the rooftops and chimneypots, just for a minute before we headed indoors again. It was the same building I’d been taken to days ago; where I’d first been taken before ah Richtkah and the insanity had gone right off the scale. This time the guards escorted me back up the sweeping main staircase, but at the top they turned me another way.
Few lights were burning indoors, and those few lamps that were lit illuminated corridors floored with age-and-use-polished red wood with a bloody, fitful glow. There were no paintings, no carvings or rugs or other embellishments, just ancient timber that’d probably seen many more decades than I had. As we passed by a row of tall windows the night behind them turned the panes into mirrors, the glass flaring and reflecting the Rris as they stalked by. Otherwise, our little group was the only sign of movement in the place.
Until we turned into a last corridor. Away down its length a fan of light spread out across the floor, across the ceiling and the opposite wall as a door was opened. A pair of Rris stepped out, lit in chiaroscuro by the glow from the room and in that moment. One of them was holding the door open for the other. As that Rris passed through and jus as the door swung closed and the wedge of light pinched out I saw the one closing the door was Escheri. The other…
“Chaeitch?”
My yell raised echoes down the corridor and I took a single step forward. That was all before a furry hand latched around my arm and the promise of claws brought me up short. Down the hall the figures’ heads twitched around, their eyes flaring like molten lead in the gloom. Chaeitch raised a hand in a half-wave a hand of acknowledgement before Escheri touched his arm and leaned in to murmur something. His body sagged slightly, then she turned him and led him off in the other direction. At the far corner she glanced back, then they were gone.
My escorts were glowering at me. The lead’s muzzle jerked in the direction they’d gone and I was told, “Move.”
Just along the way they stopped me at the door that the other pair had just exited. It didn’t look any different from any of the others we’d passed by, but a fan of light was shining through the crack underneath it. From inside I could hear faint music. Not Rris instruments, but my kind of music. Human music. One of my escort scratched at the plate and then pressed the latch and swung the door open. The music was clearer: the Indiana Jones theme.
My escort stood aside and twitched his or her muzzle in the direction of the door, indicating I should enter. I hesitated, then stepped inside
It was a well-lit room. Actually, it was well-lit to Rris eyes, but still certainly an improvement over the gloom of the hallways. Milky-white glass flues covering oil lamps hanging from wheel-shaped chandeliers glowed steadily, casting a warm orange glow. Candles were less efficient, the rows of dribbling sticks in their candelabras dancing and swaying as the door was opened. Rugs woven in geometric curlicues of tans and creams and yellows and greens were spread over a polished wooden floor that was well worn with scratches from foot claws. Walls were white plaster and pale wood, shelves on one side held a collection of various trinkets: from where I was standing I could see things that looked like coral, sticks, stones and crystals, small devices of copper and brass... dozens of little curios. Opposite those shelves stood a bookcase, that holding a spattering of books and scrolls. Across the far side of the room a desk stood in front of drapes colored and patterned like the rugs.
I counted five mediators waiting there, all seated cross-legged, upright and alert on floor cushions spread out around a small, round table made of a wood as pale as the rest of the trim in the room. That table held a tray stocked with a trio of decanters filled with amber fluid, a few glasses, and my laptop. On-screen Indiana Jones was behind the wheel of a truck, running a car full of Nazis off the road. The guard who’d led me in stared at the images flickering across the screen, and then kept staring as if mesmerized.
“Thank you, constable,” one of the tribunal said and the guard flinched, then ducked and retreated. The door was closed behind me and I stood, feeling my muscles tensing and twitching as the Mediators regarded me. All of them had at least a few grey whiskers; some of them more than others. None of them wore a uniform, their clothing ranged from a simple short polished-leather kilt to more elegant breeches and open tunic. One wore a pair of spectacles; sort of like Rris versions of John Lennon specs with a wire frame, wide nosepiece and small lenses that flared opaque when the light caught them. All of them were watching me with expressions that also varied from studied impassiveness to something that I read as wariness.
“Sit,” one of them said, not making it sound like anything else was an option. That was the female on the Tribunal? The chairperson? She reached over to the notebook and carefully touched the space bar, pausing the video and then indicated a cushion. The whole lot of them watched as I achingly lowered myself to sit cross-legged, then adjusted my wounded leg to stick out in front of me. Even seated I was still a full head taller than any of them, but if that disconcerted them they didn’t show it. Closest to me, the chairwoman’s tail was sweeping back and forth with a languid fluidity.
“You’re in pain?” she asked.
“A little,” I confessed.
“You recognize us?” that person asked again.
“I think so, ah… Ma’am? You are the Tribunal?”
“Correct. This time,” she said and that had to be a pointed reference to my previous gaff. Was that intended to be humorous?
“And are you coherent this time?” another asked.
“As long as nobody tries to drug me again I will be.”
Those words came out by themselves. One of those moments you wish you could take back a split second after it happens. Still, the only reaction that elicited from the Mediators was that a couple of them tipped their heads.
“Will it be necessary?” one of them asked.
“I hope not,” the chairperson said, tipping her head slightly. “That was rather inconvenient timing, wasn’t it, Mikah?”
I looked from one face to another. Not sure what exactly she was talking about. “W
as it?”
“You did miss the conclusion to the constable’s testimony,” one of them said.
“Oh,” I said uncertainly, but I remembered what he’d been talking about and I felt my heart clench. My palms felt clammy. I clenched them, relaxed them, hoped the mediators didn’t notice.
“Huhn, do you have any idea why he gave that to you?”
“She… Escheri said that it was just something to calm me down.” And I recalled some of the words Shyia had used and had to clench my hands again.
“It seemed to do more than that.”
“Some of your medicines don’t have the same effect on me as they do on you,” I said, then had to wonder: Why the hell was I defending what they’d done to me? “All she said was that it was to help me stay calm.”
The room of felines just watched me with those impassive visages. “Huhn,” the chairwoman coughed. “Nothing more than that?”
I blinked and looked around at the tribunal. “That’s... all they said. There was some other reason?”
“Do you know what the rest of the constable’s testimony entailed?” she asked calmly, with no particular inflection. As if she was enquiring about the weather.
“Not the exact details, no,” I said and then swallowed and asked, “Did he... did he speak more about the teacher?”
“Ah,” she inclined her head and I knew then that’d I told them something, whether I meant to or not. But they didn’t give me anything in return.
“He did, didn’t he,” I said, tension almost making me squeak.
“How much of what he said was true?” one of them asked.
“Ma’am, please,” I swallowed and looked around at the faces. “Please, don’t involve her. She’s done nothing but help others; she doesn’t deserve to be dragged into anything like this.”
