Reclamation (20 page)

“King Silver on the Clouds,” said Mind. “The dark seasons are coming to the Realm. It can do none of us any good to pursue this war when we should be pursuing a harvest and the stocking of coal and oils.”

“Then lay down your arms and welcome your brothers,” said Silver. “Harbor no murderous thoughts among you. Accept that I am the one chosen to speak for the Realm to the Skymen. This will end the matter.”

“Oh, no, Your Majesty,” said Heart. “It will not even come close.”

Who is that talking, Heart?
Jay wondered.
Is that actually your voice I’m hearing?

“Is there more to be said?” inquired Silver.

“Not by us and not at present, King Silver,” said Mind, giving Heart a hard look.

“We thank Your Majesty for your attention,” said Heart.

The Seablades retreated into their cluster of servants. The honor guard held the doors open for them to walk through.

When the doors banged shut again, Jay sighed inwardly and tried not to shift his weight. King Silver, oblivious of his discomfort, called her councilors up to the dais and proceeded to review the interview with them in detail, analyzing the contents of the Seablades’ statements, deciding what messages to send, what spies to contact, what orders to issue. Jay eased his weight gingerly from his heels to his toes and back again and tried to pay attention.

At last, the King dismissed them and Jay hurried out of the hall.

Despite Silver’s constant public announcements as to their importance, the King had not wanted her Skymen to get above themselves, so she had assigned Jay and Cor quarters outside the main building. To get to his rooms, Jay had to cross a roofed, stone bridge with sides open to the wind and weather. With its usual abruptness, the rain had stopped and the sun had turned the day into a steam bath. By the time he was through the door to the side building, he was drenched with sweat.

Unlike the King’s study, Jay’s room had nothing but a tapestry hanging in the threshold to keep him screened from the passersby. Jay pushed past it and paused for a moment to savor the night’s cool that had been trapped by the room’s stone walls.

Chiding himself for forgetting the immediate business, Jay pulled back the burgundy curtains. The window actually had a pane of glass that rattled only a little in the wind. Heart knew which room was Jay’s. If he was watching, he would see the opened curtains, and hopefully be able to make his excuses to his wife and get away. Jay didn’t want to have to wait until dark for the news. He needed to have plans before then.

“Jay?” called a voice through the door-curtain. “It’s Cor.”

“Come in, come in.” He held the curtain back for her.

Cor brushed by him and he caught a glimpse of the dark circles under her eyes. She slumped into one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. “How’d it go?”

Jay shook his head. “I could’ve asked for better.” He described the audience to her. Cor grunted.

“Jay,” she said to the ashes on the hearth, “remind me why we’re doing this.”

Oh, no.

“Because we need to accomplish the reunification of the Human Family,” he said, sitting across from her. “And because the Vitae really don’t want us to.”

“Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that last bit.”

“What’s the matter, Cor?”

“Nothing new,” she rubbed her forehead. “I’ve just gone native. It’s my job, after all. Someone has to completely understand the new membership so we can make them at ease when they join the Family.” She said the words like she was reading them off the flagstone floor.

Don’t do this to me, Cor. I can’t manage you on top of the King, and Lu, and Heart.
“We are doing this because we have to.”
Both of us are.

“Jay?” The door curtain moved and Heart stepped into the room.

Cor raised her hands to the Teacher so smoothly it might have been a reflex. Heart bowed toward her absentmindedly, with his hands held up so the golden suns tattooed on his palms flashed in the watery daylight.

“What’s the news, Heart?” asked Jay quickly as Heart moved to stand next to him.
And please, please let it be something I can use.

Heart shrugged and leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece. “Our city is hard-pressed,” he said, running his knuckle along a crack in the stone. “The dissent among our neighbors is strong and we have little help. The Realm waits to see who wins this war, Narroways or First City, and then it shall decide what to do.”

Jay knotted his fist. “We need you to help make sure King Silver is victorious, Heart. What can you tell us of First City’s state of affairs?”

Heart hesitated, leaning heavily against his arm. Cor stood and offered the Teacher her chair. He took it with thanks.

“I do this because we were lied to in the Temple,” he said, raising his eyes as if he were pleading with them, “because we’re dying. The Nameless have withdrawn their favor from their people. Our children are born dead or deformed or of the wrong lines. And the Teachers say it is not so. They say we think there’s trouble because we do not see with the Servant’s eyes. They say that as long as we repeat the Words of the Nameless in the Temple, all will always be well.”

Cor gave Jay a sideways glance and then looked quickly out the window.
What’re you really seeing out there?
Jay wondered.
Who
have
you been talking to?

Heart was shaking his head. “King Wall’s troops are going to be pulled from Tiered Side to defend the outer towns of First City. They’ll be there in three days. If King Silver meets them before they reach there, First City will lose valuable and timely help. But you should move quickly. There’s a delegation from First City in Terminus Height, and they may be wavering in their resolution to stand beside you.” His face grew uneasy. “You have worked too few miracles, Skyman. There are those who doubt you can bring us any good, as King Silver needs must fight so long and so hard to gain any ground with you at her side.”

Jay and Cor exchanged a long look.

What do we tell them? That the Board decided not to risk arming a telekinetic race whose world contains who-knows-what powers that they might still be able to use, even if all they have are superstitions to guide them? Somehow I think we’ll lose even Heart’s support if I come across with that.

“I shall tell the King.” Jay straightened up. “I shall also tell my masters, be assured.”

“Thank you.” Heart stood. “I need to get back to my chambers. My wife, you know.” He turned back to the threshold and Jay walked beside him.

“Heart,” he whispered as he lifted the door-curtain, “the King told me a garrison of one hundred troops has gone missing from the ranks of First City. Do you know where they may have been sent?”

Heart looked startled. “I have heard nothing of this. I will see what I can find out for you.”

“You have our thanks, Heart.” Jay let the curtain fall back into place and waited until he heard the Teacher’s footsteps fade down the hall.

“We’ve got to see them armed,” he said to Cor’s back. “Silver’s losing support, even though she’s winning. We’re losing support because we’re not stronger than the myths. The Vitae are going to show up soon. If we don’t have this place locked down before then, then all our time and effort, it’s for nothing and the Vitae will let these … people loose on the Human Family.”

“The Vitae might just kill them,” said Cor without turning around. “They don’t think much of genetic engineering on humans.”

No,
thought Jay.
I don’t think they’d kill this crowd.
But he said nothing. Cor was trying to convince herself they were doing the best thing possible, and he needed to let her succeed.

“All right.” Cor faced him and folded her arms as if she were trying to keep out a chill. “Tomorrow we can go back to the shelter. Find out what luck Lu’s had with the Notouch. If there hasn’t been anything, then I’ll back you on the call for arms. I mean, there’s not that many power-gifted and it’s becoming very obvious that without Stone in the Wall and her family, no one knows what the story is with the arlas.”

“Thank you,” said Jay seriously.

Cor gave him a watery smile. “Keep well ’til then, Jay.”

“Keep well.”

She left and Jay sagged onto the bed.
There’s a chance we can still take this place. A good chance.
He stared out toward the window and fingered his torque.
If we can just get moving.
The torque beeped. Jay’s heart leapt to his throat. The torque beeped again, and again, and once more for good measure.

Blood and bones.
Jay pulled the translator disk out of his ear.
It can’t be time already!

With his free hand, he undid the catch on his torque. The signal said this transmission couldn’t be handled with the usual setup. It would be coming from too far away, at too high a frequency. He slid the disk into a barely visible socket on the torque’s side and waited.

“Jahidh, this is Kelat. The First Company has landed in the Home Ground and I am with them. You have about two hundred hours left before Second Company comes down to reclaim the populated regions. What is the state of your operations?”

Jay stared incredulously at the torque. “Kelat, I don’t know,” he said.
What do you think I’m doing?
he added silently.
Running a lab experiment? Controlling a team of Beholden?
“The Unifier cause is a mess, I’ve managed that much, but I’m also standing in the middle of it. We may have finally found another artifact like Stone in the Wall, but I won’t know for sure until I’ve heard from Lu.”

“Contact me directly when you have more news.” The torque fell silent.

Jay refastened the torque around his neck. Their conversations had to be brief, he knew that. Lu might not be the most conscientious systems handler alive, but he had designed some highly efficient watch programs to make up for it. But somehow, knowing Kelat was within reach made his isolation that much sharper.

We weren’t meant to work alone,
he sighed.
Father was right about that much.

Jay lifted the lid on the chest beside the bed with one hand and loosened the belt on his overtunic with the other. He peeled off the stiff cloth and pitched it onto the chair for the Bonded to pick up for washing. He unstrapped the gun belt next. His gun was the only one the Unifier committee had voted to allow onto the planet. It was a barbaric projectile weapon. It made too much noise and too much blood, but it was impressive. It was for an emergency, if they needed to scare these people who could kill with a touch.

Jay remembered the first project he’d ever worked on as an apprentice engineer. The Vitae had been contracted to create a security network for Eispecough, one of the countries of an embattled world called Toth. Basq, proud of Jay’s engineering aptitudes, or maybe just seeking the extra status that would come from proving his son was brilliant, had gotten him assigned to the job of designing the module links. He’d worked hard, almost fanatically, and watched the network grow. He remembered his pride, both of place and accomplishment.

Then, there’d been an election in Eispecough and a new government moved in. They canceled the contract and told the Vitae to leave. The Vitae did leave, because that was their way. Work for hire only and when told to go, take the severance payment and go. Jay had kept a surreptitious eye on his work, just to see how it held up. He’d even done a little remote repair work on the code. Basq had known about it and kept it quiet. Contractor Kelat had found out, however, and had Jay removed from Basq’s custody, citing that Basq, by over-permissiveness, had allowed his child to become a danger to Vitae public dealings.

Three local months later, there was a civil war in Eispecough and the network was destroyed. The Vitae did nothing. Their work wasn’t theirs. Their vision wasn’t theirs. They’d abandon it all to chaos, because they would not take responsibility for their vision.

The Imperialists wanted to change that. They saw the change that was happening in the Quarter Galaxy. The Vitae in their fearful isolation had made no friends, established no colonies, and claimed no servants. They survived because many civilizations in the Quarter Galaxy considered them useful, and so they were used. But that could change as colonies and stations grew ripe with their own histories and technologies. There might just come a day when the Vitae went from being respected experts to being beggars, unless they established real power. Unless they began issuing contracts instead of just obeying them.

That, no matter what his father said, was the real work.

Jay weighed the weapon in his hand for a long moment before he laid it carefully in the chest. He couldn’t see the angle on any of the shadows from here, but he had the distinct feeling tomorrow was still a long, long way off.

Cor left Jay’s room without looking back. Her thoughts crowded around her like a cloud of biting flies and she was so busy trying to shoo them away so she could find some kind of understanding, that she lost track of where she was going. She looked up, blinking at the shadows and squinting at the stonework. The relief carving of the three Crooker trees told her she was almost to the dining hall. Her stomach rumbled. Food would help clear her head and warm her cold hands.

The hall itself was a broad, solid, graceless chamber. The space between the tables and benches was taken up either by stone pillars or by coal fires carefully banked in their own ashes. When she’d first gotten here, Cor had found the acrid heat suffocating. Now she breathed it into her lungs as a source of comfort and reassurance. This far into the house it was never warm. The day’s heat was not strong enough to penetrate the stone, but the night’s cold never seemed to have that problem.

And it’ll do nothing but get worse,
she thought.
The Dark Seasons are coming.

Averand, her homeworld, could zip around its sun forty times in the time it took the Realm to skulk once around the Eyes of the Servant. She remembered when she first saw the simulation of the Realm’s orbit. It circled the binary warily, swinging in almost too close, then backing off almost too far, always riding the bare edge of tolerance as it made its long, slow way around its stars. It was on its way out to the far, cold edge now.