by Mark Johnson
“So why place someone who’s leaving in under a year on a dark ops squad?”
Toornan bit his lower lip and looked around. The nearest sunbathers and swimmers were some way off, and the courtyard windows were too far for anyone to crouch and listen.
“And why does she deserve a priority pass to the artifact storeroom?” Terese persisted. “Why does all official correspondence to and from her—and some others—have to go past Keeper Makkdarm, and not through general mail services like everyone else?”
“It’s odd. I’ll give you that. But none of this proves wrongdoing.”
“But it stinks to heaven. Jools just isn’t that brilliant to get picked out for dark ops duty, not even two years after making Missionary. Her two useful traits are superb gullibility and wanting to impress.”
“All right. All right, that’s true. But why are you telling me?”
“I have no one else I can trust, Toornan. Daraam and Gember are good Missionaries, but they’re also looking for career advancement. You? Your ability is mentoring younger Seekers, and having a conscience. Where Jools clicks her fingers and points, you ask a question and give hints of the big picture. Also, you’re not ambitious, and I can tell you that as far as Holder Moorcam is concerned, you’ll never make it past Head. In a decade he expects you to transfer out to some academic or counselling job. Possibly working with a noble house’s militia.”
Toornan’s mouth dropped open.
She kept on. “I want your help because you hated being sent to break people’s livelihoods in the Wastes as much as I did, but had the sense to keep your mouth shut. You want to be gone almost as badly as I do.”
“I… I… Well I suppose that’s fair.” The poor boy might have been blinking back tears. “What do you want? How can I help?”
“Try asking Jools what she’s doing. How she’s feeling. What she thinks of her new complement. Anything would help right now, because I’m running out of ideas on how to take this further. But don’t be pushy; she’ll have been told to keep things confidential, so ask for small details.”
“Whatever access you’ve got is more than I have, Terese. I’m not flush with contacts here.” He waved a hand, displaying his isolation within the enormous courtyard.
“I need you because I’ve already done as much as I can.” She took a breath. “And that includes searching Keeper Lijjen’s office.”
“You what?” Tendons jumped out on his neck.
“It was the right thing to do. And I left everything as it was. I made sure there weren’t any security mechanisms before I picked the lock.”
“Are you insane?”
“You ever get a feeling in your gut, Toornan? That doing the right thing sometimes looks like you’re doing the wrong thing?”
“In what possible circumstances does that ever apply?”
“It isn’t like stealing a sausage from a butcher to feed a stray dog, Toornan. That’s still stealing. I’m doing this because I’m convinced Lijjen knows something we don’t about innocent people being killed. Yes, the underground chamber back home. I’m doing this because if I do nothing, more people might die. Seekers are supposed to save lives, Toornan.”
He pointed at her, suddenly excited. “Your father! Do you hear from him much? Could you tell him about this and ask for help?”
Terese snorted. “I had a letter from him a few months ago, after I’d explained our little disaster. He said to make him proud by showing courage, no matter how bad the situation. I wanted to reach through the letter and slap him.” A thought occurred to her. “What do you lot know about him and me?”
Toornan bit his lip for a moment. “You’re a good Seeker, just like him. Everyone knows. But people say your daughter changed you. They say his disapproval was the reason. That you came back from maternity a little, ah, more determined to do your job well. Always striving for perfection. Driving yourself to be better: A better person, better at your work. That you got promoted to head, maybe, just to get you to calm down a little, to give you validation.” He winced. “But you’re clearly a good leader, Terese.”
The words knocked her backward. Did everyone think she’d been promoted out of sympathy? Had Holder Moorcam seen her desperation as something to be exploited?
She dropped her gaze, unable to look up. “I suppose that’s fair,” she said, echoing Toornan’s own comment.
“My brother,” Toornan said, breaking a long silence, “wrote to tell me he was accepted to the cadets. He isn’t sure if he should go or wait until he’s eighteen. I went through the academy, but I’ll always wonder if I’d have ended up doing something different if I’d just finished school at the same time as everyone else. I don’t know what to tell him.”
“The Academy’s an echo chamber,” Terese replied. “We take the best and brightest, then teach them the easiest route to the truth. We don’t really develop our young ones.” She looked up. “Tell him to stay out of the Academy, Toornan. If he’s good enough to get in, they’ll take him when he’s grown.”
He tilted his head. “What about Pella?”
“I used to think I wanted her to follow the family trade. Chances are she’d be good at it. Her father’s one, too. But now? I’ll have her finish school. Look what happened to me.”
Toornan wouldn’t understand that, but he’d seen enough to sympathize. Perhaps if she’d known more of life outside the Seekers, she wouldn’t have needed to prove herself so desperately. To herself. To her father. She would have been made a head one day, regardless of being a single mother. And she knew she had the potential to be a keeper and a holder. Someone, somewhere, had told her she would be a holder one day. So why had she been striving so hard, exactly? Sitting on Toornan’s blanket, cracking pistachios and throwing the husks at the palm tree’s roots, she wasn’t certain.
“As badly as I need to be with my daughter, I needed this time away. She’s lost three teeth since I left. Outgrown a pair of shoes. Finished and started the school year. She had a dream of me holding hands with a man on fire and asked me to bring some sand back to Armer from Sumad.” Terese shook her head. “She thinks if a place is dry it must have lots of sand, and I didn’t want to disappoint her by explaining. Now, no matter what, I’ll disappoint her.”
Stop babbling, Terese.
She snapped her mouth shut, only seconds from bursting into tears. Toornan patted her on the shoulder.
She cleared her throat. “But if I’d stayed in Armer, surrounded by my accomplishments and family, I wouldn’t have been able to ask myself questions I’ve avoided. There are things I’ve neglected.” She took his hand from her shoulder and squeezed it. “A part of me is grateful to be here.”
They shared a moment of eye contact, as comforting as any embrace.
“Lijjen’s office,” Toornan reminded her. “What did you find?”
“Oh? Lots of books, hidden in his desk. First-hand. I think he must have bought them. Nothing contraband, or even dangerous. They were all about the Royals, in one way or another.”
“Is that significant? Some people make Royal-watching their hobby.”
“Lijjen isn’t the type. He’s too practical. But the bounty hunter they sent me to meet hates the Royals. More hatred than is healthy, and I never understood why. There’s a connection.”
“How long were you in his office?”
“Five minutes. Don’t worry, I was careful. I did test runs up to the top floor of the admin block after midnight, and hours can pass with no one going by. I used my helmet on infrared so I didn’t have to put the office’s bulb on. And I wore gloves and locked the door.”
“Do you have any idea how risky that was?”
“Not very, really, when you think about it. No guards or alarm mechanisms? Simple. I used to pick my father’s study lock all the time.”
“When did you stop?”
“Never. I sneaked in a few nights before we all left home. I was wondering about rumors about the underground chamber. There was nothing useful, by t
he way.
“But I couldn’t read all those books right there in Lijjen’s office, so I jotted the titles down. The next day I went to the library and skimmed each book. I couldn’t figure what Lijjen was interested in. Then, I looked at who had rented the books on the back of their covers. Half the Missionaries and Heads in Jools’s new complement have read those books in the past two years.”
“Still proves nothing.”
“Then I noticed that each book had the same pencil underlines at the same topics. Each title, at least fifteen books, had dozens and dozens of notations on golem. Notes in the columns, underlining, and dog-eared pages, all where golem were concerned. Imagine a class being told the exam questions a few days beforehand, and all of them have gone through and crammed as much as they can about a specific topic. That’s what these books looked like.” She met his eyes. “This chapterhouse has an unhealthy interest in golem, Toornan. Especially their creation myths.”
“Why? It isn’t like we can make a golem. Not even close. And how would we control them? Their programming is totally inaccessible.”
“There’s a word for that: Hacking,” Terese said. “It’s an old word meaning ‘to get inside a golem’s head’, and it’s almost impossible. And there were some other books in Lijjen’s office. One was a study on counter-insurgencies the Royals have used, and there were a few more about the few attempted revolutions and assassinations against Royals over the last five thousand years.”
“A revolution?” Toornan’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.
“It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s tried. Just not in a while.”
Another Sumadan woman in a scaled, green bathing suit passed them by, her gaze lingering on Toornan. He didn’t seem to notice. Light skin was uncommon in Sumad Reach, and people would remember two foreigners speaking. Not that fraternizing with her own complement was forbidden, but the less anyone saw Terese doing anything, the better. She pushed herself up.
“I’d like to speak longer, but…”
Toornan nodded. “I’ll talk to Jools. See what I can do,” he said.
“Be careful,” she replied. She met his eyes. “It’s been nice talking, Toornan.”
He smiled back.
Back in Armer she would never have made friends with Toornan, due to their difference in rank and personality types. How much of her own life had she missed since joining the Seekers?
She stepped into the cooler corridor. For once, she’d have to wait for someone to come her, instead of initiating herself.
Patience, Terese, patience!
13
As arranged, the dull brass handle turned and Toornan entered. Terese set down her book and raised the wave device’s volume. It was playing a strings-only piece. A considerate neighbor, she’d have to turn it back down before tenth bell.
If Toornan had been spotted sneaking in, people might reach the wrong conclusions about his evening visit. More embarrassment for her if she was suspected of seducing a younger man she nominally commanded. She looked down at herself. As if that were likely! Gods, she’d begun dressing like her mother, in her linen bedclothes, fluffy nightgown and slippers.
Toornan settled at the other end of her perfectly made bed, crossing his legs and producing a folded letter. His damp hair suggested he’d recently bathed, though his eyes were red with dark bags underneath. What had he been doing?
She took the letter as he delivered a baleful glare.
Well, I hope you’re happy. First, I had to figure out a night that Jools was not on duty, that her lover was on duty, that I had spare with at least one other Missionary. Last night, I found Daraam attempting to impress some Sumadan Apprentice girls in the gym, and told him they were laughing at him. Daraam was embarrassed enough that I convinced him to get drunk with me. You owe me a few days’ wages for the wine, by the way.
Easily done. But that was either a lot of wine, or of good quality.
We got drunk, and I got him to tell me the story about when he and Jools were Assistants, and her squad got lost looking for a chaos surge in the hinterlands and old Missionary Gembal ate a hallucinogenic apple from a rogue tree. I told him I didn’t believe him, and we went to her to clear the story up. She got drunk with us. She said the trees began swaying in time with Gembal, and some trees began crawling toward them if the squad stayed in one place too long.
Anyhow, I got them to talk about our new complements. We made a point of not mentioning you, by the way. Daraam has been seconded to working alchemical formulas for mechanism cleansing and diagnoses. I’ve been put into a direct mentorship with Head Pazga—which you would know if you’d asked me—and Jools says she’s getting field duties in preparation for commanding a Missionary squad of her own one day.
There’s nothing like you said, Terese. The only thing that stood out is all three of us agreed we’re being worked hard. Almost too hard to fit anything else in. I didn’t dare suggest we’re being kept deliberately busy.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, because your theories are the only ones that explain why things are so awful. But everything Jools said sounded totally normal. There was no evasion or simplifications or lies.
And just so you’re aware, I had to get up at six this morning to go spotting with a lens for a Head’s complement, further in. I spent the morning in full plate with a hangover. My head hurts and it’s your fault.
And yes, Mother, I made sure I wrote this when I was alone, and without paper underneath so no imprints are visible.
She read the letter a second time. She’d never have considered getting Jools drunk. Toornan had simply waited until the right time, loosened everyone’s tongue by paying for drinks and started complaining. She’d never have his interpersonal skills.
The letter’s contents, though? She knew Jools was caught up in something, but exactly what was a mystery. Something strange. Something that didn’t fit. She took a stylus and blank paper, using a hard-backed book as a surface.
Just tell me what you remember Jools saying. Any details at all.
She said a few days ago her group did a cleansing sweep out west. Some buildings and slum apartments. They did readings, looked for anything unusual and left. Nothing stood out about her story; it’s the same thing we do every day. She did say she was getting tired of her new head’s hobbies. Not her boyfriend, but the complement leader. She says he obsesses over antiques and they have to stop all the time to examine anything that looks old.
Terese’s heart skipped a beat. Her pen ripped the paper. The string concerto was reaching its climax, making her wave speaker vibrate a little on its benchtop.
Toornan, she’s part of a smuggling operation! It’s the antiques. And the bounty hunter is involved, somehow, because that’s his specialty. No, I don’t think she’d do it deliberately, and I don’t know what’s being moved. Gods, it might be the mechanisms we were sent after! She’s being used. I’ll put you on lookout so you might be able to follow her complement’s movements.
Terese, if something is wrong, we should try righting it. But is this really our problem? Is it our place? Unearthing a smuggling operation isn’t why we came here. I’d like to leave Sumad in a better condition than I arrived but, if I do too much poking about, and if you’re right, we could come down with a bad case of dead. Is it worth it?
Toornan, I have no right to ask you to risk your life. If you walk away, I won’t hold it against you. Actually, if you want to live, then don’t say another word to me until we’re out the gates in seven months. But twelve years ago, I took an oath to Armer to guard against chaos and preserve human life. Whatever is going on in this chapterhouse doesn’t benefit one single human in this Polis, and more likely hurts them. I’m guessing smuggled dark mechanisms are involved.
Specifically, she guessed there were dark mechanisms at work, similar to those used to drain traces of chaos energy from humans in the Immersion Chamber.
Terese continued writing:
I’m trying to do what I think is ri
ght, and that’s hard when I know nothing. It’s my duty to Polis. Any Polis. All I can do is listen to my gut. Right now, it’s like I’ve got a stomach-ache. Trying to learn the truth can’t be a bad thing.
The exact wrong thing to do, would be to sit down, do the rest of my time in this hole and ignore it. A few weeks ago, I told you I had to do what was right, not what appeared right. You said you couldn’t think how that would look, and now I have an answer.
Doing what appears right, is minding my own business, sitting back and counting the days until I go home.
Actually doing right? Sneaking about and infiltrating the chapterhouse, trying to learn what’s going on at the rotten core of this place, and exposing or breaking it. And if that means I’ll never see my beautiful daughter’s face again, I can content myself knowing I tried to save many other mothers’ beautiful daughters.
Toornan dropped the paper after he finished reading it, put his elbows on his knees and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips, then wrote:
All right, I’m in. I’ll keep an eye out for her complement leaving.
Toornan, don’t risk yourself. If I get caught, I won’t allow any strings to reach you. I need you to protect the Apprentices and Assistants and get them out of here if things turn bad.
He gave a small smile.
This is being a Head Seeker, she realized. Despite appearances, she was doing what was right.
She opened the door quietly and checked the corridor: Empty. The bulbs had automatically powered down to their minimum. Before he left, they squeezed one another’s hands, their eyes speaking what written words couldn’t. His slippered feet made no sound on the stone hallways.
With the door closed, she opened her shutters, tipped all their writing into a metal wastebasket, and set a match to their words. The fire’s warmth cheered her in ways she couldn’t explain. A feeling that all was right. That Sumad Himself had smoothed her path.
