‘Are you saying the Cariad is not divine?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
‘You did not see her at the presentation, Sais! She was clothed in light, and she called forth flame with her hand.’
He looked a little taken aback, then he laughed and said, ‘That’s nothing divine - it’s technology, like . . . like the windmills on the way here. You’d never seen them before, you had no idea how they worked, but when Einon explained them, you understood. It’s like the light-globes, or Einon’s lantern.’
‘This is more than a new means to grind flour or banish darkness! Are you saying the Beloved is just an ordinary woman who uses this “technology” to
appear
divine?’ She could accept, even welcome, the idea of new and marvellous devices; claiming the Cariad was a trickster was quite another thing.
‘She’s not a goddess, Kerin - but I don’t think she’s exactly ordinary either, and that’s the problem.’
‘Then what—?’
The door flew open. Fychan stood on the threshold, looking pale and exhausted and insufferably pleased with himself.
Sais sprang to his feet. ‘Are you alone?’
‘Aye,’ said Fychan, ‘who would be with me? The Cariad herself?’
‘You weren’t followed here? I mean, you’ve just come from the Tyr, haven’t you?’
‘Aye, I have just come from the Tyr.’ Fychan’s tone implied he thought this might be more important than Sais’s ravings.
Kerin raised a calming hand. ‘Sais is awake, as you see, but he is still not himself.’ She caught Sais’s eye.
He sat down again. ‘Kerin’s right. I’m sorry, I just . . . Fychan, your shirt - did the Cariad say anything about it?’
Sounding smug, Fychan said, ‘No Sais, she did not. Most of our business was conducted with me out of my clothes.’
Sais said, ‘She didn’t ask where you got it?’
‘No, of course not. Why should she?’
Kerin answered that question for herself: because it came from the sky, with Sais, and if Fychan had told the Cariad about that, then she would know Sais was here—Mothers’ sakes, she was starting to think like Sais!
Sais shook his head. ‘No reason.’
‘Good,’ said Fychan. ‘Now I need to get changed and go out again.’
‘Go out?’ said Kerin. ‘But Damaru’s testing is this afternoon.’
‘Aye, so I cannot waste time.’
‘Where are you going, Fychan?’ asked Sais.
‘That is between me and the Cariad, and t’would not be any of your business.’
‘But perhaps, ah, it is mine, Chilwrau.’ The three of them looked up to see Einon standing in the doorway.
Kerin and Sais exchanged looks.
What if he had heard them talking before Fychan burst in?
‘Aye, Gwas, of course,’ said Fychan, ‘but I did not want to disturb you.’
Einon said, ‘It might be best if I, ah, speak with Fychan alone.’
In her most demure voice Kerin said, ‘Gwas, we would be deeply honoured to hear the words of the Beloved, if you permit us.’
The priest looked uncomfortable. He could hardly refuse such a humble and devoutly phrased request. ‘I suppose that could be allowed. Kindly do not interrupt, though.’ He closed the door. The room felt very crowded now.
Einon started, ‘You have been truly blessed, have you not, Chilwar?’
‘Aye,’ said Fychan, a little uneasily. He had just had the most amazing sex of his life, and he was not sure he should be bragging about it to a priest.
Kerin stifled a smile.
‘To say you have, ah, experienced joy such as most men dream of would sum it up, I think.’ Einon nodded to himself. ‘But her Divinity also made a request of you. What is the, ah, the nature of this request?’
‘It might be best if I showed you, Gwas.’ Fychan reached inside his shirt.
Sais tensed, then when the lad produced a bundle of papers, relaxed. Fychan handed the bundle to Einon, who whispered, ‘Mothers preserve us! Do you know what you have here? These, ah, these are promissory notes. Each one, ah, of these pieces of paper could be taken to the mint and exchanged for a hundred marks. Why would her Divinity give you a fortune?’
‘Tis not for me,’ said Fychan, though he kept his hand on the notes. ‘The Cariad wishes this to go to a young woman called Anona. She says this girl must be given the money and instructed to leave the City at once.’
Kerin guessed everyone else was as confused by this request as she was. In the stunned silence, Fychan unrolled the notes. Inside the bundle was a small, crudely made child’s poppet. ‘Her Divinity said that this doll would convince Anona to do as she was told.’
Einon said, ‘Fychan, you are, ah, are you saying that the Cariad, the Beloved Daughter of Heaven, wishes you to find a girl, show her a child’s toy, then, ah, give her money to leave Dinas Emrys?’
‘Aye, Gwas.’
‘Did she, ah, inform you of this in the presence of any priest?’
‘No, I met no one else in my night in the Tyr. The Cariad herself escorted me at all times.’
‘And you, ah, agreed to her request, of course.’
‘Of course. But I am not sure where to go. She gave me an address and directions, and I was going to ask Ebrilla—’
‘I will find this girl for you,’ said Einon. ‘You must, ah, conserve your strength for your duties as Damaru’s guardian.’
‘Are you sure, Gwas?’ asked Fychan. ‘She gave the task to me—’
‘I know the City, and it would be my honour to do the Cariad’s will.’
Fychan still looked unsure, but Kerin understood at once: Einon suspected this girl might be the key to whatever was going on in the Tyr.
Einon clapped his hands. ‘Good, then, it is, ah, it is decided. Fychan, where is this Anona to be found?’
‘She is the daughter of Dilwyn the clerk, whose house is on the upslope corner of the Street of Lesser Reckoners.’
‘Excellent. Then I shall leave as soon as I have broken my fast. We must not, ah, keep her Divinity waiting.’
Kerin wondered why a goddess needed to send people from outside the Tyr on such a strange errand . . . unless she was not a goddess at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Einon left as soon as they’d eaten. Even if he had overheard Sais’s conversation with Kerin, he obviously had other priorities.
Fychan, who looked exactly like a man who’d gone ten rounds in the bedroom with a goddess, went to lie down.
Kerin took Damaru to their room. Quite aside from her desire to spend what time was left with her child, she had a lot to think about. After all, someone she trusted had just told her she was living a lie.
Sais shouldn’t have admitted the truth, no matter how she pestered him. But if anyone here could handle it, Kerin could. He’d had faith once too, in a male duality of loving father and self-sacrificing son. And he’d grown up somewhere where belief was the norm, though he didn’t remember it being as all-pervasive as it was here. He had lost his faith and survived.
He went and sat in the parlour, where Ebrilla’s cat immediately colonised his lap. He stroked the animal and listened to the comfortable chaos of the household. It looked like his initial panic about the Cariad had been unfounded. If she were Sidhe, she wouldn’t have
asked
Fychan to find the girl - she would have
compelled
him. Though he no longer felt the immediate need to run, he had no intention of attending the testing, just in case he was wrong about the Cariad. He eased the cat off his lap and slipped out into the anonymity of the streets.
He had assumed the Cariad was the Sidhe representative on the planet, in which case she should have recognised the smartchute fabric. Of course, if she was Sidhe, the fact that she hadn’t asked Fychan about the shirt didn’t mean she hadn’t found out through more arcane means. Or she might have asked, then removed the memory from Fychan’s mind. The Sidhe were good at that. Then again, given the Sidhe left the Cariad to rule alone for years at a time, she might not have any technical knowledge beyond that necessary to keep the ‘divine magic’ of the City of Light ticking over. She might just have thought the shirt was unusually fine, not an offworld product.
As ever with the damn Sidhe, he had no way of knowing. Perhaps he’d have been safer if he’d stayed in Dangwern. The Sidhe probably assumed he’d been killed when his evac-pod got shot down by the planetary defences - he probably would have been if he hadn’t been cushioned in gel and crashed into a bog. Even if they thought he’d survived, with the pod at the bottom of the mere and any celestial visitations likely to cause widespread panic, trying to find him would have been more trouble than it was worth - assuming they even cared: he’d been seriously messed up when he escaped, and they had no reason to think he’d recover from their
ministrations
.
Now he thought about it, they probably weren’t that bothered about him. If he kept his head down, he should be safe enough. Given how detached he felt from his old life, perhaps he could even make a new life here in the City, though he’d have to accept the lo-tech living conditions, not to mention celibacy.
Only, this wasn’t just about him.
He’d been a freetrader for most of his adult life, but for the last seven years he’d had a secondary mission: to find out what he could about the Sidhe, the apparently lost race that had once dominated human-space. He was one of a tiny handful of humans who believed the Sidhe weren’t dead after all; and most of those who thought that way had little evidence, and even less influence.
For years he had chased rumours and legends, only to have most of them vanish like mist. When he’d heard about a large, unaffiliated, freetrader ship called the
Setting Sun
that journeyed out into uncharted space every twenty-five years or so, he’d half assumed the story was just deep-black chit-chat, despite the data’s usually reliable source - just like he’d once dismissed stories of Sidhe lurking in the voids between the stars. He’d got himself into the right place at the right time and managed to slipstream the
Setting Sun
when it left the shipping-lanes - a risk, but life was boring without the odd risk, and even if the transit failed he would probably just find himself back where he started. When he followed the ship he’d been thinking less about the Sidhe than about the delicious possibility of picking up a lost transit-path the traders were keeping to themselves - an extremely lucrative find.
Instead, he’d found an entire lost colony, defended from intruders by orbital weaponry and kept in lo-tech ignorance by theocratic rule, the whole place apparently set up to provide the Sidhe with a crop of uniquely talented adolescent boys: if one or more Consorts got chosen each year, then there must be several dozen waiting for the pick-up, presumably held in stasis somewhere in the Tyr. And he’d found the ship that had come for them: not a freetrader at all, but actually crewed by Sidhe and their slaves. Or rather, they’d found him.
He’d bet the
Setting Sun
was docked at the top of the beanstalk right now, ready to collect its strange harvest. He had no idea what the Sidhe wanted the Consorts for, but he doubted it was to make the lives of the poor bastards down here any better, whatever the ‘Traditions’ might say.
He finally had the lead he’d been looking for: proof that the Sidhe weren’t just lurking in a few deep-space colony ships, but that they controlled at least one settled planet. And they were up to something big. This vital information would never leave this world if he spent the rest of his life here.
As well as his idealistic hopes of saving humanity from a threat they refused to believe in, two people he cared about were in danger because of his carelessness: his sister, Elarn, and Nual, the Sidhe child - by now a grown woman - who’d rejected her heritage and started him on this crazy path.
Nual was well hidden. They’d both known the risks he ran in attempting to uncover Sidhe influence, so before they’d parted company on a distant world, he’d let her into his head so she could hide any knowledge that could lead the Sidhe to her. When they’d captured him, they’d broken down the walls she had put in his mind, nearly destroying his psyche in the process. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to reconstruct himself: perhaps some combination of the priest’s delving, his own resilience and Nual’s lasting influence. It could even be partly down to the skyfool: Kerin had told him that when Damaru first played music to him, the boy said he’d been trying to heal Sais’s mind. Whatever the cause, he remembered everything now. And he had to assume that his Sidhe interrogators knew it all too.
Which meant they knew about Elarn. His greatest regret, in a life which included some spectacular mistakes, was introducing Nual to his sister. Elarn had never forgiven him for drawing her into the conspiracy, for bringing the fascinating alien child into her peaceful, lonely life.
Seven years ago, when he left his sister in the magnificent cliff-house that had once been their home, she’d told him she never wanted to see him again - but he’d left her with the knowledge that the Sidhe were not dead. She’d never use that knowledge, but that might not stop the Sidhe wanting this threat to their secret eliminated.
He had to warn her that the Sidhe might come for her, and Nual too, if she was still in the system where he’d left her. Assuming he wasn’t already too late: the
Setting Sun
could have broadcast the results of his interrogation by beamed virtual - but to whom, though? Despite years of research, he still had only the sketchiest idea of how many Sidhe remained at large, how widespread their influence was, and most importantly, what they were up to.
On the other hand, if the Cariad had a beevee unit in her rocky fortress and he could get access to it, then he could contact Elarn and maybe Nual. The Sidhe had several months’ lead on him, but they also had limited resources and no reason to hurry.
He couldn’t just live out his life pretending to belong here. He had to try to get word out about what he’d found. And that brought him back to the inescapable conclusion that he had to get into the Tyr.