The Touchstone Trilogy (109 page)

Maze and Kaoren were pretty evenly matched – both with similar speed and both with Combat Sight – and put on a spectacular display of blurring motion and long rallies.  Maze had the advantage early on, but Kaoren eventually pulled even and probably would have taken the game if they hadn't decided to call it quits at ten points each.  The extra anticipation Sight Sight gives him makes him very hard to fight.

Though I guess Maze is still recovering from mass Cruzatch burning.  I hadn't been planning on dinner downstairs because Seventh would be back, but Zee opened a channel to me and asked me to keep the kids down.  I wasn't sure why till I saw her watching Maze with Ys and Rye.  Maze has been under so much stress lately, and I realised then that I hardly ever see him smile at all these days.  Some things are worth putting up with Forel.

And it was hilarious watching Sen work the room as the Setari arrived back for the day.  She thoroughly enjoys having lots of people around to charm – and she pleased me no end by seeming to avoid the people in Seventh who I'm wary of, but picking out the few who seem reasonable to introduce herself to.  Her big thing at the moment is to go around introducing herself and trying to read the name display of the person she's talking to – she mangles their names pretty spectacularly, but almost deliberately I think.

Maze was far more successful at chatting with Ys and Rye than I've yet been, for all they still act like they expect to be punished for speaking in public (I have a horrible feeling that's because they
have
been punished for speaking in public), but you could hear the sheer pleasure creeping into their voices as they told Maze all about dictionaries and how you can look up an explanation of every word you heard, and the interface would even read it out to you.  That the interface would read out whole books to you and that there were so many books in there that they hadn't even been able to reach the bottom scrolling down the first letter when browsing the list of them.

After dinner we played the spelling game again – and even in the past few days Ys and Rye have improved to the point where they know all the Taren alphabet and can manage most two and three letter words.  After the game tonight Kaoren told them if next time they played they got a better score then they could ask for a treat of their choice, and they practically turned inside out trying not to look pleased.  Though, given that the interface seems to be the greatest treat imaginable to them, I'm not sure what treat they might ask for.

Since they're able to use the interface to read for them, I was half-expecting them to have finished off the book I'm reading Sen, but whether they have or not they still listened as keenly.  Sen's gone very snuggly, seeming to know that my burns have ceased to require pain meds and care, and insisted on two bedtime hugs during her story, and more from Ys and Rye between bath and story time.

I don't think they're ever likely to think of me as Mum, but they're starting to believe they're allowed to be here.  I feel all over the place at times, jumping back and forth between world-saving and fumbling attempts at parenting, but in a way Mara was right – the kids are a great distraction for both of us – certainly for me, because not wanting to be all upset in front of them has lent me a certain amount of calm.

Friday, September 5

All Around

Rotten dreams last night.  Over and over being kidnapped by Cruzatch – not too-real dreams, just straightforward nightmares, which are a lot harder to force myself awake from.  Kaoren had nightmares too – probably communicated by me – and we figured we were most likely having a delayed reaction to the ambush.  At dawn we gave up on bed and walked down to the lake (which is not strictly permitted for me at the moment, and I suspect even such a short trip meant Kaoren had to tell whoever was on watch that we were going).

It's not Kaoren's style to pretend that bad things won't happen, or that he has the power to make everything okay, and so we had a short discussion about wills and making arrangements for the kids in case something happens.  He thinks it's important that they don't end up with his parents.

KOTIS Command will probably stop quivering in a corner soon and go back to more dangerous experiments, but today's trip to Kalasa was another attempt at visualising the past in the same room.  Exactly the same result as last time, but I had the distinct impression that the device technicians really wanted me to make all the light squiggles anyway, since they were all having excited discussions about it when I came back to myself.  One of the things the technicians had particularly wanted to see was how the light squiggles reacted to the malachite marble, and they found that the marble has its own set of squiggles, and seems to 'eat' any Kalasan squiggles that come near it.

It's pretty solidly accepted now that the malachite marbles were some secret construction related to the Cruzatch.  Most of the technicians are of the opinion that the marbles interfered somehow with the platform and Pillar infrastructure set up by the main body of Lantarens and thus are the major cause of the tears between spaces.  A smaller group argue that the platform and Pillars themselves would have still had the same effect on the Ena.

Plenty of theories, but no-one's come up with any solutions.

On the good news front, this afternoon Kaoren and I held a quiet celebration over the fact that he's started to be able to enhance himself.  He can't do it as reliably as Par, yet, and has only told me.  He says he suspects he's not the only one who's reached this stage, but because it's such a sensitive issue for the Setari, few are talking about their own efforts.  He doubts all Setari will be able to achieve the enhancement – certainly not in the short term – but he thinks he knows why Par achieved it first.  Just as my connection with the Ena grows stronger when I concentrate on everything surrounding me, it was the key Kaoren used to discovering how to focus his own connection.  Path Sight and Combat Sight are a big aid.

Tomorrow is a rest day, and Kaoren plans to spend the morning off on one of the islands working on enhancement.  But he's going to come back at lunch and take me and the kids (and a suitable escort, I guess) off to visit Pandora's first ever café.

Saturday, September 6

Out and About

I asked Raiten Shaf to be one of my escorts to the café, on the theory that the Kolaren family who runs it would be so distracted drooling over him that they'd not pay any attention to me.  I don't think Raiten's very keen on being fawned over by fans, but he thought the idea of playing distraction was funny enough, and I ended up having an all-captain escort of Kaoren, Raiten, Maze and Ro.  It still bugs me that I can't just go for a walk into town by myself, but it's getting better now that I'm on a first-name basis with almost everyone who gets assigned to guard me.

Ys and Rye had been in an odd mood all morning – pleased not to have to go to the school, I think, but also having some sort of argument whenever I wasn't around.  Sen obviously didn't know what Ys and Rye were discussing, which put her out of temper with them, and she insisted on playing a game alone with me.  I cheered her up by braiding her hair with ribbons, which she adored (and finally gave me something to do with them – Nenna had given them to me and I'm not a ribbon person and had just stuffed them in a pocket of my backpack).

It made Sen forget she was annoyed and she ran and fetched Ys and made her come and have her hair done the same way.  Ys has quite short hair, a bit ragged and neglected, and I couldn't possibly do it in two long braids like Sen's, but I went and borrowed a pair of scissors and tidied it up a little and then did small, ribbon-bound braids holding back the sides.  Ys endured this, and wouldn't even look at the result in the mirror.

Rye's hair I just neatened a little, and I did my own in a French braid ('assisted' by Sen) and found a Summery dress and felt good about myself.  I've ordered more clothes for the kids, but am still waiting on delivery – and even with my lush wage I had to wince at the shipping charges, which are deliberately discouraging.

Still, we all looked very neat when Kaoren arrived back, and he obligingly changed to one of the few non-uniform outfits he brought with him.  The other captains were also dressed not to stand out and I have to admit that I was almost as excited as Sen.  Going out to the shops for lunch – something so normal and unremarkable for me on Earth – is more unusual for me now than flying, fighting monsters, or meeting world leaders.

Moon Piazza is quite a long way away from the Setari building, which is the far-flung southern point of Pandora, and so we had a nice walk to work up our appetites and arrived after what would count as the 'lunch time rush'.  We had the option of walking through the science buildings (the university, as I keep thinking of it), or looping through the old town, and decided to go through the old town to gawk at the changes which were slowly being made to it.  A small team of archaeologists had never stopped working, even after much of the attention had been diverted to Arenrhon and Kalasa, and now that the snow was finally gone the botanical types were having a field day exploring the gardens, so we'd walk through patches that looked exactly as it had been when I first explored the place, and then a stretch of houses where all the gardens and buildings had been painstakingly restored and preserved.

Today wasn't the 'weekend' for just the Setari, but for most of Pandora, since the settlement has shifted to a four days on, one day break cycle, and so there were people – children – everywhere.  The old town drew them like a magnet – the other major point of interest being Moon Piazza, which had lots of kids playing ball games – most groups had some kind of adult supervisor and there were some rather harassed-looking greensuits patrolling in an effort to keep the more adventurous out of any of the uncleared buildings.  It wasn't just Nuran children, but the long-serving KOTIS employees and the first wave of settler families, nervously picnicking on the lake's bank.

Not wearing our uniforms was reasonably effective at muting attention – though walking around with four seriously fit guys isn't exactly the best way to keep a low profile.  Some of the gawking was down to me, some to Setari recognition, but much was down to ogling.  Most of the Nuran kids, at least, had no idea who any of us were, and the Tarens and Kolarens simply stared or waved.  Sen went into puppy mode, bouncing about, scampering off the path and bringing things back to show me or Kaoren.  I ended up weaving all the flowers she kept bringing back into a little coronet for her, which she has yet to take off, crushed and wilted as it's become.  Ys and Rye continued to act seriously worried about something, paying a good deal more attention to Kaoren explaining to the other captains his theories on enhancement than on the beautiful day around them.  I didn't notice when they separated Maze out from our group – it was a quick sharp glance from Sen which tipped me off.

Sen is very much a sweet and joyful girl, but that doesn't stop her Little Miss Machiavelli moments.  Rather than go and find out why Ys and Rye had dropped behind, she held up her arms demandingly and when I picked her up kept taking peeks over my shoulder.  I exchanged glances with Kaoren, then decided to pretend I hadn't noticed.  Ys and Rye's conversation with Maze took a good hunk of our walk, while I tried to decide whether it was a good thing they'd decided to talk to someone, or a bad thing that they didn't feel they could talk to me or Kaoren.  It says something about how innately and obviously nice Maze is, that the brief conversation he'd had with them the other day had impressed them enough that they were willing to open up to him.

They looked inordinately relieved when they finally decided to catch up with us, took a few sidewise glances at me, then finally started paying attention to their surroundings.  Sen wriggled to the ground and went and tucked herself between them, and I gave Maze a 'really need an explanation' look.  He opened a channel with Kaoren and I and asked: "Have you looked at the news feeds this morning?"

I hadn't, but immediately looked, and could hardly miss the feature article titled: "Killing Caszandra Devlin".  It was actually a pretty good article, discussing KOTIS' dilemma in trying to use me to find solutions to problems both major and minor.  Because my talent set and connection to the Ena is so little understood even now, and yet so useful, they're torn between 'poking Devlin at it' and the repeated close calls I've had.  The reporter had pieced together a pretty accurate summation of the injuries I've received since being rescued, which was impressive in a single list, and discussed the morality of almost inevitably getting me killed for the greater good.

"When did Ys and Rye get access to the main news services?" I asked, embarrassed not to have known.  "That seems a little complex for the filtered, age-appropriate information the technicians described."

"It would fall in the 'challenging content' area for children in their early thirties," Maze said, shrugging.  "It's the language differences which were causing most of the problem here – using a reader for a complex article in a different dialect.  They wanted to know if the article meant that the leaders here were planning to kill you, and if you knew and had any chance of getting away."  He gave me a wry smile.  "They seem to have not wanted to ask you directly, since being marked for sacrifice would obviously be an upsetting thing for you to talk about."

"They don't yet talk to Cassandra because they fear that as soon as they accept being a part of our family, we will reject them," Kaoren said, frowning as he studied the kids' backs.  "They've been taught that they have no value, and won't allow themselves to trust anyone treating them as important.  But it's a good sign that they're becoming protective of you," he added to me.  "For all we can do little to deny the dangers.  I've found the steps we need to follow to ensure their care if we're both lost."

Maze, though he looked sad at the blunt pragmatism of preparing for the possibility of us dying, only said: "I suspect that you might find more than a few among First and Second who have taken an interest in their future."