Authors: Jane Lindskold
Griffin’s revelations had not particularly shaken Adara, but she knew that there were those who would be unsettled, even furious, to learn that the seegnur had proven as argumentative and self-destructive as a farrow of piglets. The question of how those religions would react when—even if—they learned the truth could be comfortably postponed. The one reaction that could not be ignored was that of the Old One Who Is Young.
Over dinner, the Old One listened attentively as Griffin and Terrell outlined their new approach. Pretending to be more interested in her meal than the men’s plan, Adara watched their host’s reactions. She thought the Old One was pleased, but she felt a sneaking suspicion Griffin was not living up to the Old One’s idea of what a seegnur should be.
“I will join you,” the Old One said as the dinner plates were cleared away and an apricot tart brought in. “Griffin, I am certain you will agree that we cannot disrupt the crew quarters in our hope we will find a document that may not exist.”
“Of course,” Griffin agreed easily. “However, I will admit I had the impression that you were unsatisfied with our progress.”
The Old One gave a thin-lipped smile. “Unsatisfied? Not in the least. I am certainly eager for some great revelation. However, whatever is here has waited five hundred years. Surely it can wait even a year or two more.”
The fleeting expression that passed over Griffin’s face made it quite clear that he did not wish to wait a year or two, but he did not speak his protest aloud.
“What do you have in mind?”
“I was thinking we should make note of where everything in each room is located before we disturb it. That way we will not later regret our haste.”
Griffin frowned. “In my own world we have machines that would do such a thing in seconds. What do you suggest we use here?”
“Sketches,” the Old One said. “Nothing overly detailed, simply enough that if some area is disturbed we can return it to its place.”
Griffin’s frown deepened. “I can sketch a little, but I am neither fast nor particularly efficient.”
Terrell cut in. “Both sketching and cartography were part of my training as a factotum.”
The Old One nodded approval. “I will send for some of the local loremasters. I have worked with them before and they understand what I require.”
“But won’t they be curious about Griffin?” Adara said. “Loremasters would be the most likely to detect that he is not Artemesian. I thought we agreed to keep his true nature a secret.”
“True. I have some thoughts as to a substitute biography for him. Moreover, Griffin can work with Terrell and stay away from the others as much as possible.”
“But recruiting the loremasters doesn’t mean we can’t begin searching this evening,” Griffin pressed. “I remember one room that was pretty bare. It might have been uninhabited at the time of the raid. We can start there. Old One, I have the impression you also can sketch.”
“Yes. I have acquired some skill over these many years.”
“Good. Then you start on another room. That way it will be ready to be searched when we’re done with the first.”
Adara swallowed a slice of apricot tart to cover her grin at the Old One’s astonishment at being assigned such a menial task—and at being given orders.
But he wanted this done. He can hardly protest that he is too important to participate.
Although they went over the first room meticulously, it yielded nothing of use, nor did the second. Eventually, Adara excused herself.
“I need to go stretch,” she said. “It’s going to be ages before another room is ready for me anyhow.”
No one protested. Adara suspected that they would quit work soon. Tempers were wearing thin as, again and again, the Old One’s insistence on drawing everything came up against Griffin’s certainty that the location of a pillow or dust-encrusted blanket did not matter in the greater sense of things.
As Adara slipped outside to join Sand Shadow, she found herself wondering.
Is the Old One deliberately trying to slow down the search? Is he perhaps less eager than he seems to find out more about the seegnur? Or is he merely challenged by Griffin in a way he has not been for many decades?
* * *
Although they didn’t find the cheat sheet in those first days, they did find a number of items that led to considerable speculation about what the seegnur valued. Evidence that the staff had plenty of contact with the local community was shown by the trinkets and textiles that decorated their rooms.
There was also ample evidence of trade that was less open. Hidden in some truly ingenious places were bottles of locally brewed beverages, hallucinogenic preparations, and even pornography. All of this led Griffin to argue that the landing facility staff was kept on a pretty short leash and—in the manner of such groups in every planet he had visited—had found a way around the rules.
“They certainly had a good trade network,” Terrell said after translating the archaic script that identified the contents of a glass container that now only held scraps of brownish material. “The particular mushroom used in this preparation grows only in the tropics. We’ve often wished we could acquire some because it apparently permitted pain control without dulling mental acuity.”
The Old One had arrived to view this latest find. Turning the bottle in his slender fingers, he said, “Artemis in the days of the seegnur was different, even for the Artemisians. With the seegnur’s universal rule to keep the peace, merchants could expect their goods would make it to port.”
“What about storms and such?” Griffin asked. “Did the seegnur provide weather control?”
“I have not been able to find conclusive evidence of such,” the Old One admitted. “However, weather is only one—some might say the least—of the threats merchants face.”
“Piracy?” Griffin suggested.
The Old One nodded. “Piracy is certainly a problem. So are privateers—pirates operating under the guise of law. One of the greatest problems is taxation. In the days of the seegnur, there were no taxes. The infrastructure was supported by the fees the seegnur paid. There were no armies to supply and maintain. Since the slaughter of the seegnur, every little ruler charges for protection, every little town for public services. Merchants, coming as they do from outside, are charged road tolls or harbor fees or to rent stalls in the market.”
Griffin nodded. “I can see how that would put a damper on long-distance trade. I hadn’t really considered the cascade effect.”
Adara excused herself, since long discussion of taxation and trade policies wouldn’t be in keeping with her assumed character. As she stepped out into the night, she found herself wondering:
It has been a long time since this region had a king. Perhaps that is because, uncrowned as he is, there is a king here no sensible person would cross—he is called The Old One Who Is Young.
* * *
Although Adara’s assistance definitely sped the search along, Griffin was the one who found the long-hoped-for “cheat sheet.”
He’d been pulling apart one of the last of the small rooms, a chamber that—judging by the lack of local goods in its decor and its unfavorable location both next to a service shaft and at the end of a long corridor—could have been given to someone of low rank.
By now, Griffin had a strong sense of the usual hiding places, as well as for a number of unusual ones. When he found the cheat sheet, it was in a place so obvious Griffin could almost see the fresh-faced innocent who must have hidden it.
Each chamber was supplied with a bed framed in by cabinetry. Various shelves and tables could be manually pulled out—arguing that there were times when the power supply on Artemis might be interrupted. The cheat sheet was tucked into the underside of one of the lower tables.
At the time it had been hidden, the sheet would have been completely concealed, but even the seegnur’s high-tech materials had deteriorated over five hundred years. When Griffin poked his head under the edge of the table, he saw a small rectangle outlined against the sagging liner. He carefully eased it out, expecting yet another pornographic drawing or perhaps someone’s attempts at poetry. When he saw the two parallel columns of icons, each annotated with a few neatly printed words, he could hardly believe his good fortune.
“Terrell!” Rolling from under and up onto his feet, Griffin saw the factotum rounding the doorway, his sketchbook in his hand.
“Got something?”
“Do I! Look. The first column is the Artemesian icons. The second are what historians think were universal Imperial icons—at least they’ve been found on planets all over the former empire’s range. The notes aren’t in any of the languages I’ve studied, but there are similarities. Given time, I’m sure I can work a translation.”
Impulsively, Terrell gave Griffin a bone-creaking hug. “We’d better tell the Old One right away. He’d be furious if he wasn’t the first to know.”
They found the Old One sorting through the contents of the suite they had guessed belonged to the chief administrator of the landing facility.
Despite my careful explanations as to why this area was likely to have been thoroughly picked over,
Griffin thought,
the Old One has clearly never given up his sense that important things will be found where important people lived. Then again, maybe he’s not looking for the same things we are …
“I’m going to need to sit down and do some translating,” Griffin concluded, “but now that we have a rozeta, it should be infinitely easier.”
“Rozeta?” Terrell asked curiously.
“Sorry. Archeology jargon. It means a text containing an unknown language, along with one or more known languages. In this case, the Artemis icons are our unknown, but the other two are at least partially known.”
“Well,” Terrell said, “it may be a rozeta for you, but it’s meaningless to me. One or two of the icons in the second column look vaguely familiar. The lore says they indicated public services like drinkable water or toilet facilities.”
“Griffin will be our translator,” the Old One stated. “However, there is no reason why the rest of us should not continue our investigations. We might find something that will add to our information.”
He’s pissed he didn’t find it here and prove me wrong,
Griffin thought.
“A fine distribution of resources,” Griffin agreed aloud. “It’s still daylight. I’m going to take advantage of it.”
* * *
Soon after Griffin found the rozeta, Adara and Sand Shadow paddled out toward the islands one night at low tide, hoping the currents wouldn’t be as strong and they that could walk over the shoals. However, the currents were, if anything, worse and the shoals proved to be made from very jagged rock. The barriers to approaching the islands made Adara more certain than ever that they would be the perfect place for the Old One to hide his secret.
She and Terrell did their best to find out anything they could about the islands but, other than Terrell finding a tavern performer who knew an old ballad that referred to “Mender’s Isle,” they came up with nothing. The singer didn’t even know if Mender’s Isle was one of the Haunted Islands or not.
One afternoon, Sand Shadow—who had been perfectly content to do some of her napping where she could keep an eye on the fishing village—noted a surge in activity. She hurried back and sent Adara images of boats sailing in and out, much loading and unloading of boxes and barrels. The final image was more complex.
Negatives were hard to indicate in pictures. Indicating that Sand Shadow had found trace of deer scent was easy: her sniffing, then one or many deer. They’d had to work harder to figure out how to show the absence of something. Eventually, they’d come up with showing the image, then deliberate blankness. Sand Shadow now gave the negative image for the usual things the fishing boats brought in: fish, crabs, and the like.
“So,” Adara said, suspecting that Sand Shadow understood her a great deal better than she did the puma. “Boats came in with lots of goods but you don’t think it was the usual catch. Boxes and barrels … That seems to indicate supplies of some sort. Have they left?”
To reinforce her words, she sent an image of laden boats sailing out of the harbor.
Sand Shadow repeated her image of the boats still in the harbor.
“Interesting. Let’s be ready to follow them if they go out after dark.”
Sand Shadow avidly agreed and loped back to keep watch. Adara joined her at twilight. Little gusts off the bay carried random sounds she associated with the moving of heavy objects. Occasional fragments of commands confirmed this impression. Several times, Adara thought she heard Julyan’s voice.
Julyan’s whereabouts in Spirit Bay remained a puzzle. Adara had hired Edward Trainer and a few of his siblings to see if they could find where Julyan was staying. She impressed on them that she wanted to find the man, but didn’t want him to know he was found. Accustomed to the complex games used in training the dogs, the children did not find this last in the least strange. However, although they were thorough, the few men they found who met the description Adara gave—which included that the quarry would not be native to Spirit Bay—each turned out to be someone else.
Adara and Sand Shadow had searched for any indication that Julyan was camping. He might be a hunter, skilled in hiding his sign, but Adara was confident that in combination with Sand Shadow she was as good or better. They also found no trace of him. Adara had almost convinced herself that Julyan had left the area but now, here, she was hearing his voice.
When twilight shifted to full dark, Adara moved the canoe closer to the fishing village. Then she and Sand Shadow took turns drowsing and watching for signs that the boats were leaving the harbor. Quite late, after most of the lights in Spirit Bay were doused and the town bulked black at one end of the bay, they heard the ships raising sails.
Despite the slim chance that any would notice this nocturnal venture, when the fishing fleet moved out every effort was made to keep evidence of their actions to a minimum. Voices were kept low, oars were muffled. The loudest sounds were the squeak and groan of rope and timber.