by David Weber
Kelahm somehow deposited the man farther off in the crowd in front of Lady Durthia, who welcomed the newcomer and his wife with mutual hugs.
Tears blurred Darcel’s vision for a moment before he forced them away.
* * *
Alazon Yanamar left Darcel to handle the rest of the long line of well-wishers. The team had finally gotten him off the train platform and into the assembly room proper that had been rented for this campaign stop. They’d also made sure it had a good strong roof to hold off the rain if another squall came through.
He was good at these moment-by-moment meetings with Talents young and old who wanted to lay eyes on their candidate. He’d also work the line faster if she wasn’t mentally whispering in his ear, and that meant a shorter wait for those at the end of the line who might simply leave if forced to stand too long.
She scanned the room to reacquaint herself with the mood of the rest of the crowd and caught the nonverbals passing lightning-quick between the Voice she’d drafted for campaign coordination, Istin Leddle, and the double handful of Darcel’s political staff scattered across the room.
Two of the staff took station farther up the receiving line to gush about their excitement for the campaign and subtly remind the constituents not to crush Darcel’s hands. They might also encourage those at the end of the line to stay for the long wait to see the candidate himself.
The team was good. And Alazon watched her husband-to-be with a deep sense of pride. He was good too. Other campaign managers taught their candidates complex tactics for pretending empathy with potential voters. Darcel didn’t need any of that. He liked people, and it showed.
The next pair in line had brought a baby, and Alazon suppressed a laugh as one of her interns produced a baby blanket. Darcel deftly laid it over his arms and bounced the cooing infant without ever touching the child directly. He’d insisted on something being found to keep the babies safe when the first of the mild campaign illnesses caught up with him and even the smallest infants kept being pushed into his arms anyway.
Istin had suggested blazoning the campaign logo across the thing like a banner, but Alazon had nixed that in favor of a discreet appliqué in one corner. The parents loved them. She made a note to order more.
She’d also have to see about getting more regional campaign offices and finding out which of the interns were interested in long-term employment on the Kinlafia staff. It wasn’t too soon to plan for Candidate Darcel becoming Minister Kinlafia.
Perhaps a trip outside New Farnal would be good. For this first election, Alazon’s goal for Darcel was to secure a position in the new House of Talents by a large enough margin to carry a sense of mandate. The polls showed he was popular everywhere. If a few fellow delegates owed their elections to his support…Alazon began mentally calculating the costs of leaving his base electorate for a day trip or two compared to the impact of merely giving a few supportive Voicecast interviews.
* * *
Kelahm chan Helikos, member of the Ternathian Empire’s most elite personal protective service, served tea and delicate biscuits to the ladies of the Whitterhoo League of Women Talents waiting in the drizzle outside the packed meeting hall. He’d certainly worked in worse conditions. The crowd was cheerful and no one paid him much attention.
He hadn’t even had to provide his cover story yet: Kelahm Helikos, adult middle son of a prosperous Animal Healer, taking a few months off from the family business to volunteer on the Darcel Kinlafia campaign.
Talents that could detect lying, rare though they were in the general population, were too commonly hired to serve as political correspondents for Kelahm to risk any overt falsehoods in his cover story. So everything he said about himself was true. He simply left out many other true things no one would think to ask about.
For example, he wouldn’t mention the chan honorific earned from his military service before his recruitment into the Ternathian Imperial Guard. Nor would he mention that his father had also served in the Imperial Guard before retiring to an out of the way game preserve and setting up shop as an Animal Healer just to keep himself busy. And if the reason Kelahm had volunteered to join the Kinlafia Campaign had to do with his superiors’ orders, as indeed it had, he had no intention of mentioning that fact either.
The other interns clearly didn’t care for standing in the warm rain, so he’d arranged his security screen by suggesting they shuttle full carafes of tea and warm covered trays out to him for distribution among the crowd. The bedraggled pair he’d replaced had happily agreed.
Three hours into the shift, Kelahm had to partake of the tea himself when one of the interns started joking that he had some kind of Talent granting imperviousness to weather. He didn’t. But displaying too much self-discipline led to the wrong sorts of questions.
The tea was chilled with ice brought down from the mountains and deliciously sweet on his tongue. The cookies were rich enough to replace his lunch if he could have had a dozen more of the petite dainties. Kelahm brushed the crumbs off the front of his slightly oversized shirt and complimented the Whitterhoo League of Women Talents on their baking skills.
He could easily have refrained from eating the food and drink meant for the voters, but he had to play his part. This first day in a new cover was always the hardest.
He needed to convince the other interns he was entirely as they expected him to be, with his personal depths being limited to quirky tastes in music and perhaps a bit more naiveté about the world than they themselves had. Once they had him mentally slotted he could do whatever he had to do for the real job: Darcel Kinlafia’s protection.
Privy Voice Yanamar’s blonde assistant brought out the next load of sweets. Kelahm corrected himself, Voice Yanamar’s assistant. She’d made it quietly clear that none of the campaign workers were to use her previous title while she ran Voice Kinlafia’s staff. Especially not here, where feelings about the Calirath dynasty remained a bit ambiguous. That was the sort of detail she never got wrong.
Voice Yanamar was an excellent, if massively overqualified, campaign coordinator, and none of the staff she’d selected were a threat to Darcel, so Kelahm had moved quickly past them after his initial review reconfirmed their loyalty. Unfortunately that meant he’d met everyone but didn’t really know any of them yet.
Istin of the pale Bernith Island skin and driven professionalism common to all the Privy Voice’s Talented protégés settled beside him as if he’d decided to have some cookies himself while out of sight of the team supporting Kinlafia in the main hall, and Kelahm suppressed a smile. The young man was almost certainly after the same view that had attracted him to the small rise in the first place.
Kelahm hadn’t stopped scanning the crowd for threats while taking his break, and he’d picked out a spot where he could see the train station and a good stretch of the track. His Talent worked at close range as well, but he’d already scanned the group inside for the complex instability that might presage an attack on Kinlafia. Outside, he had more range to deal with and redirect those who really shouldn’t be allowed within arms reach of the candidate Emperor Zindel had assigned him to protect. Watching the train station let him keep an eye on the cars on which Kinlafia and the Privy Voice would head to the evening’
s next stop. He couldn’t see the backs of the cars from here though, and the crowd looked to be thinning, which marked the nearing end of their stay at Whitterhoo.
Istin was doing a poor job of showing any interest in either his tea or the half eaten cookie in his hand. His head turned back and forth with the careful slow movements used to pass a scene to someone whose inner ear balance couldn’t automatically adjust for the regular bobs of someone else’s normal head motion—specifically to another Voice. Unless Kelahm missed his guess, Alazon Yanamar had just received an update on how many voters remained outside and how likely they looked to stick around long enough to fit into the packed assembly hall.
Kelahm knew a lot about more Talents than he could count. That knowledge was part of what made him such an effective bodyguard, and so were his own Talents. He was a Chameleon, able to blend so unobtrusively into the background that he could evade even trained security personnel who knew he was there and were trying to keep track of him. He couldn’t physically disappear; he was simply…not there even for people who looked right at him. It was a vanishingly rare talent, virtually unheard of outside the families who’d served the Calirath Dynasty for generations. And he was also a Heart Hound. He couldn’t read minds or emotions, but he could tell, unerringly, when a person was acting under duress or about to do something he deeply regretted. In other generations the Talent might have had the most use in the courtroom; in this one it proved remarkably useful in ferreting out unwilling agents caught in Emperor Chava Busar’s cruel control. Heart Hounds were less rare than Chameleons, but the Talent was still highly uncommon, and so long as the Uromathians didn’t recognize Kelahm was one, he had a very good chance of keeping Darcel Kinlafia safe. If Chava ever figured out how or who so consistently blocked his infiltrations of the Calirath household, on the other hand, the nature of those attempts would abruptly become much more difficult to detect and Kelahm chan Helikos would become merely an exceptionally dedicated personal guard. And speaking about guarding…
He nudged Istin’s shoulder when he seemed to have finished Sending.
“Want to go take a walk over to the train station?”
A pale face already beginning to redden in the sun blinked at him, and Kelahm wondered for a moment if Istin didn’t know he was trustworthy. Then Istin nodded slowly.
“Yes, let’s take a look at the other side of the cars.” He paused a moment. “Lufren and Torhm will come out and see to the pastries. We can go ahead. Voice Yanamar expects another hour to go before they break for the overnight trip.”
Kelahm tucked the two names away his memory, and noted Istin had just completed another lightning fast communication with their boss inside to ensure the campaign stop continued to run smoothly.
“Okay. Let’s go then,” he said, and they meandered down across the rails to the other side of the train station. The campaign train with its small private engine and car remained undisturbed.
Istin frowned at it.
“What?”
“We should’ve had the new engine here by now.” Istin’s frown deepened. “The new one’s bigger and can haul more cars. There’s some more campaign supplies coming with it, and it’s got a much better paint job, too.”
In the waning afternoon light, Kelahm examined the engine in front of them. It looked pristine with clean lines and, to his eyes, a fine coat of road-worthy gray paint, but Istin slapped the side of the machine with irritation.
“This’s supposed to say, ‘Elect Kinlafia Now’ on one side and ‘Darcel Kinlafia for Parliament’ on the other. We’ll update the slogans as soon as he wins, of course.”
“Of course,” Kelahm agreed though it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone would bother to paint political slogans onto a train engine at all. A check of his extended senses gave him no warnings of ill intent, but a thrumming vibration in the railway and the distant shriek of a whistle announced an inbound train.
“Do you suppose that’s it?”
Istin cocked his head slightly, and his eyes glazed for a few moments. Not safe, Kelahm’s instincts screamed, but the young Voice of course couldn’t hear him. He was instead communicating with someone assigned to the railway.
“No.” Istin scowled. “Not it. That’s the train the railway rerouted our engine for. Diplomatic priority, even though we submitted our timetable first.”
A magnificent, if unadorned engine squealed to a halt at the Whitterhoo Station trailing three unusual carriage cars and the normal motley of freight.
Istin Leddle groaned and trailed unwillingly behind him as Kelahm chan Helikos hotfooted up to the train station to see who might disembark.
“Don’t talk to them!” Istin called after him. “It only makes them more curious!”
No one had left the newly parked train before Kelahm arrived on an empty platform and discovered he wasn’t the only one with a sense of curiosity. He stopped quickly and his eyebrows rose as a dolphin’s left eye, set on the side of a long gray face, examined him from one of the windows. What Kelahm had at first taken to be normal carriage cars were actually filled with water and glassed in. The cetacean flipped in place as Istin arrived beside him, and another pair of small dolphins took to examining Whitterhoo from the large window in the next aquarium car.
The young Voice scanned all three and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank the gods, it’s just dolphins and porpoises. At least they can be reasoned with!”
“Really? You’re a Cetacean Speaker?” That hadn’t been in the file Kelahm had seen on this particular Voice, but the Imperial Guard had no reason to give him full details if Istin was Talented beyond his publicly-acknowledged exceptional Voice Talent.
Not unless they had some reason to classify Istin as a potential threat, at any rate.
“No. I just did an internship at a cetacean embassy.” Istin waved off the suggestion. “They’ll have brought an interpreter with them. All the cetaceans hear just fine. It’s the listening I’m worried about. Just be glad there isn’t an orca,” he added darkly.
The Voice took his fist to the freight cars and began banging on each in succession until a weary young Cetacean Speaker climbed out of a car stacked high with dried cod. The young woman looked distinctly unwell and stepped gratefully off the train onto the platform.
“I am never, ever volunteering for one of these trips again!” She declared. “Just like being on a boat, my ass!” In spite of the green tinge to her own skin, the young woman turned back to her freight car and began hauling out stacks of dried fish to present to the dolphins and porpoises enjoying the afternoon sun in their cars.
“Trainsick?” Istin inquired.
“Yes!” She groaned. “And we were supposed to be in port and back in the ocean yesterday.”
“Oh?”
Kelahm gave the Voice a sidelong glance. Somehow he suspected Istin already knew what the cetacean train’s listed schedule had been.
“Yeah.” The Speaker sighed heavily. “I’m Forminara Pelgra, by the way.” She paused a bare moment for a formal introduction. “These are Nnnnmmmll, Llllooouooo, and Mmmmunnnll. But they’ll try talking to you even if you don’t get the pitch right. And don’t worry about memorizing the names, if you see them again, they’ll probably have picked other human names by then.”
“Those aren’t human names,” Istin pointed out.
Forminara shook her head. “I know, I know. But they like the sound of those letters, and they are human letters. There was this orca, and—”
“Never mind,” Istin interrupted. “I understand; I’ve met orca.”
One of the dolphins squealed something that sounded like laughter.
“Oh. And they’d like you to know my nickname is Sings Badly. It’s a joke.”
The dolphin’s musical response raised a blush on Forminara’s face.
“Okay, not totally a joke, but,” she added defensively, “I’m getting better.
“Say, have you seen any porters around here? We’re supposed to have a load of fresh
fish at this stop, and there’s also supposed to be a politician they wanted to meet. Have you ever heard of a Darcel Kinlafia?”
* * *
Her husband knocked lightly on the wood frame doorway of the tidy office Shalassar Kolmayr-Brintal kept for herself at the Cetacean Institute. Once he wouldn’t have needed to draw her attention so overtly. But Shalassar was a Cetacean ambassador and founder of the Cetacean Institute in Shurkhal—work that continued even as she grieved for the loss of their daughter—and Thaminar Kolmayr tried to shield her from the overflow of his own mourning while she was working. Even so she felt the pain that mirrored her own and sensed him searching for a light topic for their luncheon conversation.
“Should we support Darcel Kinlafia, do you think?”
