by K. Aten
Despite Castellan’s pride telling her otherwise, the large duffel she carried was heavy and within five meens the strain was making her sweat in her dress uniform. After another five meens she told her pride to take a flying leap and opted to carry the duffel with her telekinesis instead. The officer wasn’t sure what to expect from General Renou’s home but she had a clue as soon as she entered the upper class community. While it was true that no one in Psiere was allowed to go hungry, remain sick, or live in a poor quality house, some Psierians definitely fared better than others.
The gate to General Renou’s property was a massive iron blockade that was bracketed on both sides by a tall stone wall. The top of the wall was lined with sharp metal spikes for as far as Castellan could see. It wouldn’t keep out a diligent thief or ne’er-do-well but it would certainly deter the rest. Just as promised, there was a dial lock on the gate and Tosh used the code that Renou gave her to gain entry. Once inside, the paved stone walkway didn’t go up to the house as expected. It was all lawn and gardens of immense topiatic delight. Rather than stare at the animal images that had been cut into the hedges along the front, Tosh followed the walkway around the right side of the medium-size manse.
As soon as she was behind the large home, she spotted another building that housed the General’s motos. The fact that the general had more than one was telling as to the intimidating woman’s wealth. But Castellan didn’t stop there. She continued following the path farther back on the property until she came to a small two-story house. The stone and design perfectly matched that of the main house, just significantly smaller. The walkway ended at the front entrance to the guesthouse and she wasn’t sure what to do except stare.
Before she could formulate a plan, the door whooshed open and a man of both middling age and middle height stood in the doorway. His hair was shockingly thick and white and he was dressed in normal civ clothes. The dark orange tattoo of consorage around his neck strikingly matched to his eyes. She’d seen the design duplicate of it around General Renou’s neck, only hers was a less striking gray color. “Lieutenant Commander Castellan Tosh?”
She dropped her duffel bag and held out her hand. “Yes, ser, and you are?”
He clasped the offered hand and grinned. The smile utterly transformed the stoic and somewhat ordinary face into one of animation and joviality. “My name is Pendar Renou, I believe you’ve met my par, Camen Renou. She teleoed ahead and informed me of your arrival.” He stepped back into the house once again. “Come in, I was just checking to make sure it was well stocked for your stay. If you’ll follow me I can show you the amenities and let you pick out a room to leave your duffel in.”
His name seemed familiar somehow but Castellan couldn’t place it. He showed her around and afterward she picked out a bedroom to leave her gear. “You have a beautiful property, Psero Renou. If you’ll forgive me, but your name seems familiar to me. What is your Corp?”
He grinned again and his entire demeanor brightened. “I’m Psi Service Corp. Does Pendaren sound more familiar?”
“Yes! That’s it, you’re the famous writer!” Tosh gave a slight bow, awed at being in the company of someone so well-known. “It is an honor to meet you, ser.”
Pendar waggled a finger at her. “On the contrary, the honor is all mine. After all, it’s not every dae I get to meet the Hero of Temple Beach, or the woman who took a shell for a sovereign of Psiere!” Tosh flushed at his unexpected praise and remained silent. His ever-expressive face changed yet again. “Oh! It seems I’ve embarrassed you, I really didn’t mean to. I suppose you are tired after all your travails of late so how about I show you to the liquor case and leave you alone. Savvy?”
She nodded and he did as promised. When he was gone, Tosh loosened the collar of her dress shirt, poured herself a glass of well-aged scotch, and took a seat on one of the reclining couches outside. It was there that the smell of spring and delicate sounds of birds lulled her into a fast and deep sleep.
“MAMAN, PAPAN!” OLIVIENNE looked up in surprise as soon as she exited the railer. Her pride was still stung that she had not won the handsome officer back to her good graces before they parted company. And the presence of her parens at her homecoming threw her off as well. “Whatever are you doing here?” Standing side by side, the iridescent tattoos around her parens’ necks drew her attention. The royal tattoos of consorage were the only ones made with special ink that seemed to glow during the daelight oors.
Queen Olivara Dracore drew her only daughter into a firm hug. When she let go, Olivienne’s papan did the same. Her mother gave her a disbelieving look. “Do you really believe we’d stay away after hearing about the assassination attempt yesterdae?” The Queen’s eyes welled up before she pushed away the emotion. Olivienne saw it and recognized the technique for what it was because she used the same skill herself when dealing with overwhelming emotions. Growing up in the public eye had taught them all that the people wanted to see a calm and capable ruler, not someone whose emotions got away from them in a public place.
To break the heavy scene, Keshien Dracore grabbed his par’s left hand and wrapped his free arm around Olivienne’s shoulders. “Come. Let’s not stand here making our Shields worry and sweat. We have a moto waiting to take you home.”
They had just started walking and the Connate pulled up short. “You mean my home, right? Not back to the palace.”
It was her mother who spoke. “Please, ’Vienne...can you not spend some time with your family? We feared we had lost you when the first reports came in about the assassination attempt. When we heard that one person in your party had been shot and it wasn’t a member of the Shield unit...we feared the worst.”
Olivienne sighed and chewed her bottom lip. She knew her parens worried and also knew she had much to tell them that she wanted kept private until the official announcement was made about her discovery. “Why don’t you come to my place instead? I would like to unpack my bags and get a little more rest. Also, I have news—”
“News?”
“What news?”
The feel of Olivara and Keshien’s voices in her head was as familiar as the sound of her own. She nodded and glanced around before briefly touching the center of her forehead with her thumbnail. It was a code known only to the royal family that said she had urgent secure information for them. Rather than reference the family telepathy session or the code aloud, the Queen responded with a nod. “What news could you have that is more important that our daughter’s homecoming?”
Olivienne grinned and reached into her large shoulder satchel. When she withdrew her hand, she was holding the long-barrel pistol. She flipped it around and held it out to her mother, handle first. “I found this beauty in a little pistol shoppe in Penterole.”
A single dark eyebrow went up as the Queen took the gleaming weapon. Besides the long barrel and polished teakwood grip, there were the usual openings for ammunition and illeostone. One small gauge on the side registered the illeostone’s charge and a small marker on the other side let the shooter know exactly how much ammunition was still loaded. She stroked the finely crafted weapon reverently. Both she and her daughter were known sharpshooters and they shared their mutual love of pistols. The more unique the better. “Distance?”
The Connate shrugged. “I hit a clock tower thirty yords away when I needed to, and I was promised triple that.” Olivara sighed and made to hand it back but Olivienne waved her off. “No, I bought it with you in mind. I apologize that I had to trial it out first though. First shot should always go to the gifted and not the gifter.”
“I think we can make an exception this time. Come, we are holding up the railer and the rest of the fine passengers with all our overprotective guards. Let us head back to your dwelling where we can catch up.”
Back at Olivienne’s residence, she was going to let Lt. Savon send a detail inside for a security inspection but her mother stayed the order. “I already had Captain Torrin take a team though to inspect the entire place and
two guardians were left inside to keep it secure.”
“Thank you.”
Once inside, Olivienne stood in the foyer and apported her bags up to her room, with the exception of the shoulder satchel. That held the two special double temple documents and their translations that she wanted the Queen and King to see. They took seats around her entertainment room and she spread the original documents out on the low table. She immediately began recounting the tale of the past few daes to her parens. “You remember the undecipherable document I found in the cave, and how I went south in search of a match to it?”
Her father looked down at the table and grinned, excitement of his daughter’s discovery taking ten rotos off his face. “You found it!”
“Yes. Unfortunately neither yielded to our two encryption keys and I was frustrated. The solution was actually discovered by an officer staying in the first class segment with me. She too has a fascination with the Divine Mystery and was interested in the documents so I let her take a look at them. They were doing me no good at that point.”
Her mother glanced at her with a curious smile on her face. “Officer? Would this be the same one who accompanied you on your outing in Penterole, the one that was shot?”
Olivienne’s face darkened with the memory. “Yes, that’s the one. Lieutenant Commander Castellan Tosh, of the Psi Defense Corp. She was returning to Tesseron for reassignment and we struck up an acquaintance.”
“Oh?” One thing the Queen, and perhaps all mothers across the continents, excelled at was speaking an entire paragraph of thoughts with just one word. Olivara knew her daughter quite well. She watched the way the younger Dracore spoke, and took in her facial inflections and understood exactly what she meant by acquaintance. Of all the things the Queen could have said in reply to Olivienne’s words, the one that wasn’t going to be mentioned aloud was that she recognized Castellan Tosh’s name as one that had been brought to her a lune previous. There was a very small list of people that were both qualified and suitable to head up her daughter’s Shield unit. On one hand, their “acquaintance” complicated things. On the other, knowing of Lt. Commander Tosh’s similar interests as well as her sacrifice to save her daughter only convinced Olivara that the officer was the right one for the job. Time would tell.
Olivienne ignored her mother’s weighted ‘oh,’ having heard it often enough. Either she would say what was on her mind eventually or not, but the Connate had learned that her mother would not be drawn into conversation about her thoughts prematurely. Instead of dwelling on whatever it was the Queen was considering, she went on with the story. “So Tosh pointed out that with a double symbol, perhaps they needed the key to be of both temple names. It worked on one, and after a false start where we had to reverse the temple names for the southern document, it worked on the other as well.”
Keshien leaned forward abruptly. “So we have what, one or two more keys to translate documents?”
Olivienne shook her head. “No, not exactly like that. I think the double key will only work with documents with the double symbol. However, when we translated these two sib documents we made a discovery that will change everything! Here, I’ll let you read for yourself.” She shuffled the pages until the two translation sheets were on top of the pile in the correct order then slid them back across the table for her parens to read.
Meens of silence went by while they perused both sheets. Then nearly as one they sat back and stared at their daughter. It was Keshien who spoke first. “A third temple? But where?”
Her mother’s mind immediately went to the harsher implications and for a sec Olivienne was reminded of Tosh. “I’m not going to lie, the power of antoraestones has the potential for immense destruction and it worries me that something like that will be discovered and fall into the wrong hands.”
The King’s opinion better aligned with Olivienne’s own view. “But love, think of all we could do with that power! Why...we don’t even know if there are other continents someplace beyond our current dirigible range on the ocean. We could better hold off attacks from the Atlanteens! With these special amplifiers, we would need less illeostones for the essential maintenance of our cities and people could have more access to power in their private lives!”
Olivara looked from her daughter back to her par, understanding that they were both optimists in life while she herself was much more a realist. “Have we already forgotten Ser Teloch?”
Keshien’s lips turned white with the way he was pressing them together with anger.
Olivienne cocked her head. “Obviously before my time, but we learned about him at Academy. Wasn’t he the rogue telepath that was forcing people to do his bidding on his estate during grandam’s reign? He killed the most people with his channel of any other Psierian before or since. Something like thirty deaths, right?”
“No.” While Keshien was a powerful man, strong, brave, and forthright when he needed to be, few knew that he was also very sensitive. The tone in her father’s voice made Olivienne look at him with concern. After a few secs he continued. “They only knew about the people on his estate that he killed before the Psi Security and Defense Corps caught up with him. Your grandam was recovering from an assassination attempt and a lot of things were still in disarray within the government. After Ser Teloch’s capture, word came to Tesseron of a small town that had simply disappeared. The buildings were still intact but no people. There was only one survivor, a small boy who had been sent to stay with his grandparens and was not there at the time.”
Olivara took over the tale when it became too much for her par to continue. “Ser Teloch was from that small town. Before he was captured, he forced his mind on the citizens and made them all walk off a cliff to the ocean and rocks below. All one hundred and fifty-two died. When the grandparens brought the boy home to his parens they found an abandoned village. They reported the incident and brought the boy back to live with them. A weke later, what remained of the bodies were found at the bottom of the cliff and daes later Ser Teloch was captured and executed.”
Olivienne raised her eyebrows. “I should hope he was executed, he violated the Codice Prime! We were well instructed in the laws of Psiere at academy. Any premeditated death to a sentient entity is punishable by life on Iuvenis Island. Unless that death was caused by channel, then the Psierian was deemed too dangerous to live. But what does this have to do with the antoraestones and why does the story of Ser Teloch upset you so much, papan?”
“Your papan was that small boy.”
The Connate was too shocked to speak at first. Then she delicately reached out to her father, mind to mind. The request for speech was gentle and followed by the equivalent of a mental hug. “I am so sorry for your loss. Why have you never told us?”
He shrugged and answered silently as well. “Because it is a sad tale and I never want to bring sorrow into my children’s lives if I need not. Besides, I barely remember my parens or sib. It was long ago.”
“Sib? I have an amita or patruus?”
Keshien shook his head sadly. “Had an amita, ’Vienne. She was killed with my parens.”
“My love...” Olivienne’s attention was pulled to her mother once again. “Now do you see the danger presented by antoraestones? If a man like Ser Teloch could kill nearly two hundred people with the power of his mind, what could someone do with something that amplified them to ten times the strength? What power would a telekinetic or pyrokinetic hold with such a stone if they were intent on evil deeds? None of us would be safe.”
Olivienne shook her head not because she didn’t believe in the danger, but because of how her mother came across. “Maman, you sound like Tosh. Truthfully, it is a bit disconcerting because I don’t want to think about the Lieutenant Commander right now.” She made a face of consternation.
Keshien’s focus left the distant past and moved to the present and his daughter. “But ’Vienne, did you not say you and the officer became acquaintances on the railer? And Lieutenant Commander Tosh was also the
one who helped you crack the code on the temple docs. Why would we not speak of her?”
“She was the one who was shot in the assassination attempt, wasn’t she?” While the royal couple had not known about the translations of the temple docs or the news contained within them, they were well informed about the events that went down in Penterole. Not only did Lt. Savon voteo ahead his report on the incident, but so too did the local Security Corp. But even with all their advance information, they were still putting the puzzle pieces together.
Olivienne swallowed thickly and nodded, still picturing the bloom of blood as it ran from beneath Castellan’s pain filled body. “She was. We—” She stopped, suddenly realizing the extent of her foolish actions in the marketplace.
“I acted with foolishness and dishonor and I’m afraid I forever disgraced myself where Lieutenant Commander Tosh is concerned. Lieutenant Savon knew about the assassination attempt ahead of time and I thought that I could handle the problem myself rather than delay our trip by following proper protocol and calling in the Security Corp. I was wrong and only Tosh saw the danger of the second assassin. She saved my life and possibly others by taking the shell that was meant for me. On top of that she managed to kill the shooter while she lay in agony on the ground.”
She sighed and scrubbed her face while Olivara and Keshien Dracore remained silent. “When she woke from her healing, she gave us all, but especially me, a thorough dressing down for our senseless plan.”
Keshien reached over and clasped her hand within his. “I can imagine the entire event frightened you, being that it was the first overt attempt on your life. I only wish we could have had a chance to interrogate one of them to see who the supplied the cred for such a thing.”
