Wolf Captured (34 page)

“I am not privileged with such information,” Harjeedian replied.

“What about the other members of u-Liall?” Waln said, drinking half his wine in one deliciously cool swallow, and filling the glass again. “They were glad enough to meet with me when the voyage was being planned.”

“Then the omens indicated that such pleased the deities,” Harjeedian said. He crossed to where water chilled in a sweating pottery jar and dipped himself a cup. “The omens apparently have not indicated that visiting with you is how u-Liall is to spend their time. Perhaps you might tell me what

you would discuss with u-Liall, and I could seek solutions.”

Wain didn’t want to put his questions to Harjeedian, but since the alternative seemed to be not putting them to anyone, he began, though reluctantly.

“First, I want to know how long we’re expected to stay in this place.”

Harjeedian looked around the spacious room.

“Are you not comfortable?”

Wain swallowed a rude retort, for in truth, he was comfortable. Along with Shelby, Rarby, and the other survivors of the shipwrecked
Explorer
, Wain now resided in a large building down near the harbor. Each man had his own suite of rooms. Servants brought meals and handled the cleaning. The men had been provided with a wardrobe in the local style. Last night there had even been entertainment—minstrels singing after the local fashion. However, the relative luxury of their situation could not change two things.

One, they were expected to work as tutors in return for their keep. Two, for all the mannerly words the Liglimom used to avoid discussing the matter directly, they were prisoners.

“The quarters are quite adequate,” Wain said, careful to offer praise lest his jailers put him in a worse place, “but I find that I am not permitted to leave the building. None of us are.”

“That is for your own safety,” Harjeedian said. “The residents of u-Seeheera are not familiar with foreigners, and we have some legends that feature evil creatures that quite resemble you northerners. Perhaps these legends are remnants from the days before the deities blew the breath of Divine Retribution upon the land, when perhaps our founding nations were less than friends. Whatever the source, we do not think it would be safe for you to walk the streets.”

Wain hadn’t noticed any xenophobia on the part of
Fay-onejunjal’s
sailors, but then that venture would have been crewed with open-minded types—as had the
Explorer
. He put this aside for further consideration.

“Also, I find we are expected to work as teachers. I, myself, had at least three different men here today—all disdum. At first I thought they were making a social call, but I soon realized that they expected me to teach them Pellish.”

Wain let creep into his voice a hint of his indignation that he, the anticipated new ambassador, had been reduced to the role of language tutor. Harjeedian seemed to miss the point entirely.

“Then you are not capable of teaching Pellish?” The aridisdu looked mildly puzzled. “I thought you quite passable—not equivalent to the minstrel, certainly, but then your training is different.”

Wain swallowed a mouthful of bile at this insult so casually offered.

“That’s another thing,” he said. “Where is Barnet Lobster? Where, for that matter, are Lady Blysse and Derian Carter?”

Harjeedian’s annoyance showed momentarily, but there was no trace of it in his reply.

“Of course you would be concerned for your fellow northerners, especially after you did so much to help bring them here.” Again there was an implied insult in the silky words, a reminder that neither Lady Blysse nor Derian Carter would view Wain with any fondness at all. “They have been staying in Heeranenahalm, although all but Barnet have recently relocated.”

Heeranenahalm translated as “City of Temples” and was, as Waln knew from earlier meetings, the district surrounding the towering step pyramid, a very exclusive area. His resentment burned brighter at hearing this, but not sufficiently to make him abandon his search for information.

“You said, ‘until recently,’” Waln prompted. “Where are they now?”

Harjeedian apparently decided to humor him.

“Derian Counselor has been taken to u-Bishinti. Lady Blysse has gone to Misheemnekuru. Barnet Lobster remains a guest of the Temple of the Cold Bloods in Heeranenahalm.”

Earlier, the fact that the name of the place where Derian had been taken literally translated as “the stable” might have fooled Wain into believing that the proud young king’s counselor had been demoted to a mere a stablehand. However, Waln had been speaking Liglimosh long enough to know that while the “u” prefix literally translated as “the,” it meant something more like “top” or “best” or “model.” So u-Bishinti must be the most important stable, if not in the nation, at least in this area.

Wain felt a certain sour satisfaction when he learned that Barnet Lobster remained in Heeranenahalm, but his command of Liglimosh was not adequate for him to figure out where Lady Blysse had gone. Doubtless, he realized sourly, precisely what Harjeedian had intended.

Another little reminder to keep me in my place
, Wain thought, and though his first impulse was to pretend that he had understood perfectly, he knew this was what Harjeedian would expect.

“I know that ‘mishem’ means ‘islands,” he said. “After all, I am an islander myself. ‘Ne’ indicates possession, but ‘kuru’ is beyond me.”

Harjeedian’s slight smile accorded Wain a point in this little battle of wills.

“It is a difficult concept to translate,” Harjeedian said, “not knowing your culture. In a limited sense, it means ‘safety,’ but it implies more than mere physical safety. It means a safety that is defended by the will of the deities.”

“We have something like that,” Wain said. “It isn’t precisely the same, but if a fugitive chooses to take refuge in the society chapter house, that refuge is granted and the society must be appealed to before the fugitive is turned over to authority.”

“Is the society then more powerful than the law?” Harjeedian asked.

“No,” Wain said bluntly. “If say a thief is fleeing the law, then he’s going to find the society turns him over pretty quickly. A servant fleeing an abusive master, or a wife from a husband who beats her—even a child from his parents—can appeal to the society to help resolve the matter. There’s law involved in those cases, too, but sometimes a person needs to hide first, then call on the law.”

“Interesting,” Harjeedian said. “Your societies then have real power. They are not simply social entities.”

“I never thought about it much,” Wain said. “Everyone thinks about the festivals first. Those are the most fun, but the societies do have power.”

Harjeedian nodded as if making a note of this for later reflection.

“Your explanation of the society as refuge does help me,” the aridisdu said. “The term ‘kuru’ is closer to this refuge as granted by a society than to mere safety, but in this case, the safety is granted—even assured—by the deities. If any trespass against kuru then the deities will punish that person.”

“A sanctuary on an island doesn’t seem like much good,” Wain said. “How would a person who needs help get there?”

Harjeedian made an apologetic gesture.

“I forget that you do not know the history of those islands. The sanctuary is not given to fugitives, rather, the land is reserved for the sole use of the yarimaimalom. It is their sanctuary, and any human who violates it will suffer divine punishment—if the yarimaimalom do not resolve the matter first.”

Wain had already figured out that the Liglimom were nuts about their animals, but he had to keep from gaping at the idea of giving over entire pieces of land to them. He might have asked more, but then he remembered why the situation had come up in the first place.

“But Lady Blysse went there. Isn’t she violating that restriction?”

“Lady Blysse claims herself yarimaimalo rather than human,” Harjeedian replied. “Blind Seer has accompanied her. The rest is up to the divine will.”

Wain had the feeling that Harjeedian wasn’t as comfortable about all of this as he pretended, but he was an astute enough trader to know when not to push his point.

“So both Derian and Lady Blysse have left u-Seeheera,” he said, politely providing Harjeedian with an escape from this awkward topic. “Barnet’s still here. Maybe we can visit.”

“I shall speak with him about the matter,” Harjeedian said. “He, too, is very busy teaching.”

Wain felt a little better about his own work if this was the task that Bamet—who after all was blood kin to King Harwill—had been set. Maybe it wasn’t a demotion after all. In any case, he had a lot to think about now, and he was willing to bet that Harjeedian had told him a whole lot more than that pretentious twit Tiridanti ever would have.

“I appreciate your offering to ask Barnet,” Wain said. “Those of us who survived the shipwreck are like brothers after what we went through. I’ve worried about Barnet.”

“I am sure,” Harjeedian replied ambivalently. “I must return to my own duties. Is there any message I can bring to Ahmyndisdu Tiridanti?”

“Only that I wish to continue to be of service to her and to the rest of u-Liall,” Wain replied. “You have been a great deal of help in answering my questions.”

“I am pleased to have been of service,” Harjeedian said.

After Harjeedian had left, Waln moved to one of the outer windows. All the windows on the exterior of the building—as opposed to those that overlooked the interior courtyard—were small and narrow, meant to permit the circulation of air, but to shield the interior from the violence of the weather—or so one of the servants had said when Wain had asked. Wain still thought these small windows meant the building was intended as a sort of glorified prison, but he had decided not to say so.

Although the exterior window wouldn’t permit even a child, much less a man of Waln’s bulk, to climb out, it was sufficient for him to view the bay. He had remembered islands in the bay, but as they had not been much in use he had dismissed them from consideration, thinking they must be swampy or disease-infested.

Now he viewed the green masses with new interest, noting for the first time what seemed to be the ruins, of buildings thrusting up here and there. Harjeedian had spoken of history. The buildings implied that before the islands had been turned into a preserve for the yarimaimalom, they had been used by humans. That meant there was probably fresh water, game, timber …

Wain didn’t know to what use he could turn these conjectures, but he knew that he wanted to learn more about Misheemnekuru. He wouldn’t ask Harjeedian. No good would come from giving that snaky-eyed aridisdu whatever he would deduce from Wain’s questions. No, Wain would be a devoted little language tutor, and while he was teaching his students, he figured they’d be teaching him, too.

ONLY A FEW DAYS HAD PASSED since their arrival on Misheemnekuru, Firekeeper already was certain of two things. One, she did not like how Moon Frost was sniffing around Blind Seer. Two, she was certain that the Wise Wolves were hiding something from them.

Firekeeper could hardly blame them for the latter. After all, she and Blind Seer were strangers, not only from another pack, but from another land as well. Although the Wise Wolf Ones tried to present their proximity to the human outpost as merely a coincidence of territories, Firekeeper had recently grown more aware of the delicacy of such matters.

Her own birth pack held territory near the easiest path through the Iron Mountains from Hawk Haven into the western lands. Once Firekeeper might have thought this just coincidence, since someone must hunt those lands. During the last summer, she had realized that the territory was considered a place of honor—and great danger. After all, as far as taking advantage of the deer and other woodland creatures that lived in those lands, Cousins could have hunted there as easily as Royal.

Thinking over the choice made by the Royal Wolves to keep some of their own near that critical area, Firekeeper couldn’t believe that these Wise Wolves, for all their apparently amity with humanity, were not aware that this borderland was sensitive territory. There were many decisions to be made by those who held it.

How far would the Wise Wolves let humans penetrate—say, after a strayed cow—without warning them back? What action would they take if some adventurous or ambitious young aridisdu decided to make a name for himself by claiming exploration rights? What would they do if the humans decided to visit some of the ruins left by their ancestors?

Once Firekeeper would have believed that killing the interloper was the simple, and obvious, solution, but now she knew that such killing was far from simple, and that humans—for all their own territoriality—tended to get very offended when asked to respect the rights of others. Would these Liglimom humans be in any way different? Firekeeper wasn’t at all certain they would be.

However, these were all things about which she hoped to learn more over the course of her stay—part of her desire to find out whether the Wise Wolves were indeed prisoners of the humans, no matter what each group wished to pretend to itself. Pups were less reserved than adults, and Firekeeper could already sense that the adults of the pack were inclined to view her as a peculiar sort of pup—a youngling like Rascal at best. This annoyed Firekeeper, but as she thought she could turn the misconception to her own advantage, she didn’t fight against it.

Watching Moon Frost play up to Blind Seer, Firekeeper felt an urge to fight rising from deep inside her—but it was a confusing urge. Shouldn’t she be glad for Blind Seer? Moon Frost was a very powerful hunter. Firekeeper had never liked the idea that her beloved pack mate be limited to the lowerranking, nonbreeder role. She had been proud when she saw him asserting himself One to One when introductions were made to this new pack. Was that the reason for her anger? Fear that Blind Seer would be demoted to a lesser place within this larger pack if he bonded with Moon Frost?

Honesty forced Firekeeper to deny this at once. This pack was not large enough to support two breeding couples. Were Moon Frost to find a mate, she would split off and found her own pack. Far from being demoted, Blind Seer would be elevated, and next spring would find him father of his own litter.