The Braided World (35 page)

Mim was approaching, and signed to her, Uldia on the south steps—take the middle staircase. <

Gilar hurried to follow Mim down the corridor. Behind her, she heard Maypong's voice, small and resonant in the stone cell. “Gilar, my daughter. Forgive me.” Gilar rushed on, her eyes burning. The voice pursued her: “For all that I have done against you, and failed to do. Forgive me.”

Gilar couldn't forgive her. But no one should wear the wire crown, not ever again. Not even Maypong.

Anton replaced the mike in its cradle. Despite the sun's having gone down, the heat lingered. Heavy air tunneled into his lungs as he sighed. Tomorrow his seven days were up. Webb had said,
I don't know what the crew will do. They're not thinking clearly.

Anton had pleaded, “Give us a few more days, for God's sake.”

The crew members were aware of his discovery in the canyons. Maybe it would stay their plans, if they were
thinking clearly.
Perhaps, too, they should be thinking about what reception would await them on Earth for abandoning the mission.

I've asked
, Webb had said.
I don't know what they'll do.

A new vaccine had stopped transmission of the virus, and the remaining stricken crew were recovering, with no new cases reported for the past five days. This round might be over.

Bailey opened a screen. “Come have your dinner, my dear.” She'd been very gentle with him the last two days, since Maypong's detention.

He followed her to the table, where a meal of dried meat and fruit waited. Along with a small package.

“Joon came by,” Bailey said as she ate a bit of roasted meat.

Tearing open the cloth wrapping, Anton found a pile of broken sticks. Bailey leaned over the low table, frowning.

“Pencils,” Anton said.

“Colored pencils,” Bailey mused. “But they're all broken.”

“It was a gift,” Anton said, thinking the relationship, like the pencils, was beyond repair.

Whatever opinion Bailey held about the broken pencils, she kept it to herself. She poured from a carafe of fruit juice. ‘Are you going to send Nick up?”

Anton stared at his food, thinking. Nick was critically ill, they knew that now, after Zhen had figured out he'd been switching the blood test results. He'd hidden his condition in a desperate bid to avoid the
death ship
, as he called it. Anton set the bundle of pencils aside.

“Yes,” he answered, “as soon as I can arrange it.”

One of the screens opened. It was Shim. “The king consents to see you now, Anton,” she said.

Bailey raised an eyebrow at Anton. “Need any help?”

He smiled at her. “Yes, lots.” But he left her to finish her dinner.

As Shim led Anton through the pavilion, the corridors became ever darker, until they could barely see their way. “Why are the lights out, Shim-rah?” Anton asked.

“The king has darkened the palace to view the stars, Anton.”

They climbed a ladder onto a roof walkway, catching a hot breeze from the river. Shim's baby was on her back, wrapped tightly against his mother. The infant pointed behind them at the river, saying, “Uldia.” He had a tie to his ul-dia of the birth waters, never to be broken. Like Joon to Oleel. Joon—doing Oleel's bidding, goading Anton to stumble. Perhaps Joon's interest in hoda equality had been false from the beginning. Somehow, though, it was difficult to imagine the Lady Joon doing anyone's
bidding.
Even her father's.

Shim was climbing another ladder, surefooted and with
an unerring step despite the blackness. “Over there,” she said, gesturing at several people moving in the shadows at the edge of the roof.

“Why are we meeting here?” Anton asked her.

“Oh, Captain, perhaps there are not so many ears on the roof.”

Anton's eyes were adjusting to the darkness. He recognized Vidori, by his dress and bearing. Attending the king were three people Anton hadn't met, along with an array of instruments that he took for telescopes, by Shim's remark. The instrumentation was emitting a low whining noise, as of moving parts, or perhaps a nearby generator.

The king nodded to him. “Yes, Anton.” He gestured to his instruments. “My astronomers say that your ship can see the stars better from so high. Is this true? That the stars shine better for you?”

“Yes, rahi. Above the atmosphere, the view is better.”

Vidori bent over to look into the eyepiece of one of the telescopes as an astronomer adjusted it for him. “You must have seen a wonder or two, Anton. With your fine telescopes. Better than ours. Higher than ours.” The king turned a small knob on the scope, still watching the sky. When he stood upright, he nodded at the others, who left with Shim, leaving the two of them alone.

“I was hoping to have word of Maypong, rahi, with your pardon.”

A silence came between them. “How is it that Maypong comes to mind when you are thinking of leaving, and will no longer see her in that case?”

“Have I said I will leave, rahi, or do you say I must?”

“I have not said so, Anton. But you have your answers, you said. If so, then you will travel home.” Anton had told him all that had transpired on the trip up-country. Vidori seemed genuinely surprised by the langva theory—but not by Nirimol's attack. Well, he had said,
Go armed.

“We haven't found what we need. Not yet.”

“But when you do, you will leave?”

“Yes, rahi. But Maypong is a matter by itself. She shouldn't suffer for my sake.”

Vidori turned and walked to the edge of the roof looking down on the river, where lights lit its bank, describing its course all the way to the junction with the Sodesh. It was the only light Anton could see, except for Joon's pavilion in the distance, brightly lit, as though in defiance of her father's habit of stargazing.

“And you,” Vidori said, “should not be seen to leave because the Second Dassa demands it.”

Maypong was a hostage, that much was clear to both men. But Anton suspected that to Vidori, Maypong was expendable in the larger political arena.

“And you, rahi, shouldn't allow the Second Dassa to flaunt your authority.”

“Oh yes, my authority.” Vidori turned back to him. His face was very dark, his expressions masked even more than usual in the night. “But you have not forgotten there are three authorities in the Olagong?”

“No, rahi. I have not forgotten. Nor have I forgotten that one of them arranged an assassin to try to kill Zhen in this very palace.” Vidori had heard that Oleel admitted it. Anton went on, pressing home his point, “The same authority that now holds Maypong. Your enemies are very bold. How long will you tolerate it?”

“Not long,” the king murmured. “She is an excellent chancellor.”

“She is my particular and cherished … friend.”

“Ah.” Whatever Vidori made of that comment, Anton had no idea. “Thankfully, Oleel will not keep her, Anton. I have said this.”

“Or harm her?”

“Will not keep her, I have said.” Vidori's tone grew strained.

But then, the conversation had been stilted from the beginning, their former easy conversations long passed. To Vidori's credit, however, he'd taken them in after the burning
of their islet had made it clear they were unwelcome on the Puldar.

After a moment, the king gestured toward his telescope. “I will present my stars, Anton.”

Anton realized he was being invited to look into the contraption, a large assemblage firmly bolted on ceramic mountings. Anton walked over to the telescope as Vidori indicated the eyepiece into which he should look.

Bending over it, Anton could at first see nothing but a blur of light. Vidori's hand came over his, guiding his hand to the tuning knob. After a moment of adjustment, something came into view. It was the ship. The telescope was tracking it, in synchronous motion.

Anton stood up from the eyepiece. “Rahi, you are not stargazing, you are shipgazing.”

“That is true. It is a fine sight, this ship that flies among the heavens.” He murmured, “I told you that my sight went farther than the Olagong.”

It was not a particularly welcome thought. Not for the first time, Anton wondered if Vidori wished for the technology that Anton could offer. So far, the king had not broached that subject.

“What do you see then, rahi?”

Vidori's voice came low, and urgent. “I see that Oleel wishes to unravel the braid, to usurp the powers, to keep the Olagong from changing.”

Anton said, ‘And
is
it changing?”

The king almost smiled. “There is singing where there was none before.”

Anton considered this. Was Vidori's ploy with Bailey to warm the Dassa to his human allies? Or to the hoda? But even Joon did not think the king sought betterment for the slaves.

Vidori continued, “Oleel unravels things under cover of night. I would flush her into the open. Before she grows strong, you understand.”

“Many Dassa are already with her, so it seems to me, rahi.”

“Oh yes, but not as many as are with me. I know this, because they paddled the river when Bailey gave us her song. They are still with me.” Vidori's voice became more personal, more urgent.

“Stay with us, Anton. Force her to reveal her treachery. She cannot abide you and what you are. This will force her to move against me when she is not strong.” He lowered his voice still further. ‘And before the death of Homish, who is loyal.”

It took Anton a moment to piece it together. The king wanted Anton and his mission as a thorn in Oleel's side, to precipitate an action on her part so that the king could move against her. Before Nirimol brought the judipon over to Oleel's side. He planned a peremptory strike against the threat of her revolt. It wasn't at all that Anton had arrived at a bad time. He had arrived at a perfect time. He had always been a tool that Vidori meant to use. There was little Anton would have put past Vidori, but his cunning was more convoluted than Anton had guessed.

“Deliver Maypong from Oleel, and I'll stay a little longer.” There, now he was playing the same game as Vidori. Lies and politics. Perhaps he would have done well to have played it from the beginning.

“Yes” was all Vidori said.

So, now he had reason to believe that Vidori would keep his word. Because he wanted something from Anton in return. But if the
Restoration
abandoned him, he had no doubt he would be of little value to Vidori.

The king was silent now, as though he too saw that their footing had changed. He seemed more cynical. And more honest.

The meeting was over, but Anton stayed. Now that they were being honest, there was something he wanted to know. “Who killed that pregnant woman, rahi? When you hunted her, did you kill her with my knife so that I could
have a piece of land and incite Oleel according to your timetable?” Vidori was silent, but Anton wasn't going to let him stay that way. “Was it all part of your plan?”

“I didn't kill the hoda.”

“But you ordered it.”

“Yes.” He glanced around to be sure his attendants were out of hearing range. “I instructed Maypong to slay the hoda, using the knife of Nidhe's that was in your keeping.”

Maypong. She had been gone from his side that day for a little while. She had disappeared in the rainstorm. Then reappeared by the hoda's body. He remembered thinking,
My true chancellor, at last.
But no, she was the king's.

Vidori nodded at Anton. “You wanted to leave the palace. Thankfully, I arranged it.”

“I think, rahi, that you arranged exactly what you wanted.” Anton didn't like the thoughts he was having, didn't like to think that Maypong was the king's pawn. But of course she was, of course she must follow his orders. He wondered just how much the king had ordered her to do. His heart turned dark. Had everyone used him?

“I take my leave, rahi,” Anton murmured, sick to death of the conversation.

“There is the matter of your lieutenant, however.”

Anton turned back. “Nick? Lieutenant Venning?”

“Yes. He has not been a good chancellor to you, Anton, I think you know.”

“Hasn't he?” Was there more that Vidori had orchestrated, had hidden?

After a pause, Vidori said, “He has been on the Amalang, but hidden.”

The Amalang. Oleel's river. “Hidden?”

“Oleel has set him to spy on you. He has spent many hours in her company.” Vidori shook his head. “Not a good chancellor.”

Anton stared at the king, ready to refute this. But in his heart, Anton knew that Nick was capable of it. Anton had never been his captain, only his competitor. “How long?”

“Since you came among us. Weeks.” After a pause, Vidori said, “You didn't know, then. Good. I had hoped that you didn't know.”

Anton didn't try to hide the bitterness. “Hoped that I was loyal?”

After a beat, Vidori said, simply, “Yes.”

“You might have told me sooner.”

“I walk the narrow line, Anton.”

Anton's own phrase, the idiom he had taught the king, back when there'd been time for wordplay and room for trust.
The fine line
between what one could say in the Olagong, and what one could not.

Anton turned away then, and without pleasantries left. In the shadows, Shim waited for him, to lead him through the maze of roofs.